The Rhythms of Imagined Faith

The Rhythms of Imagined Faith

David I. Smith is always a keen observer of the ways unspoken patterns and rhythms shape us. He often writes about this in the context of school environments, but his observations relate to the faith formation of children as well:

Thinking back on those processes leaves me reflecting on how it matters for the formation of our students not only whether there is prayer, worship, and exhortation, but what rhythms of presence and absence they exhibit. Our students learn how faith fits into the world not just from our explanations, but from our gestures, rhythms, and silences. They learn from the things we habitually connect and the things we leave unjointed. They learn from the contexts that seem to trigger faith talk and the ones that don’t. They learn from what we consider worth praying for, what kind of people we consider worthy of an audience or a story, which lives and choices we point out as noble, what lived examples we keep in circulation, and what things we pass over in silence. Our repetitions lay down a rhythm that sounds an invitation (to our students, to ourselves) toward particular dance steps. The dance can be freeing, as it seems to have been for Elizabeth Conde-Frazier. It can also be constricting, as it was in my own early Christian experience.