Raising Faith-Filled Kids
Ordinary Opportunities to Nurture Spirituality at Home

Tom McGrath
288 pages
Loyola Press, 2000
Retail Price: $12.95
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From the Publisher
What does it mean to be a spiritual parent or to have a spiritual family? It's not a mystery, but simply a matter of being mindful of the spiritual life your family already experiences. Parents are on a spiritual path from the moment their child is born. Children are brimming with sacred mystery and joy.

Raising Faith-Filled Kids offers a generous collection of easy tips and tools to help parents realize this spiritual path and inspire virtue, discipline, and hope in their families.

Writing from personal experience and drawing from the experiences of others, Tom McGrath shows fellow parents how to bring faith into everyday family life through familiar objects and regular routines. With twenty-three "Taking Action Tips," this action-oriented book will help parents encourage faith in their children's lives, from infancy through the teenage years.


About the Author
Tom McGrath is the executive editor of U. S. Catholic magazine (http://www.uscatholic.org/) and the co-author of the family-life newsletter At Home With Our Faith (http://www.homefaith.com/). McGrath is an avid writer and speaker on family-life issues and spirituality. He lives in Chicago with his wife and their two daughters.

Book Review
Not long ago I had a wonderful breakfast in a neighborhood diner in Chicago with Tom McGrath, author of Raising Faith-Filled Kids: Ordinary Opportunities to Nurture Spirituality at Home. En route to Chicago, I read his book and was anticipating a rich and lively conversation with him over breakfast. I was not disappointed. Tom is one of those "great ideas!" guys. You know the type - at least a half dozen insightful ideas for every mediocre suggestion of your own. And that's how his book reads. He presents a rich vision for family faith and spirituality, and then fills it to the brim with one practical idea after another.

Raising Faith-Filled Kids addresses such topics as "Good News for Parents: You Can Pass On a Living Faith," "Objects, Spaces, and Rituals: Holiness That Lives Close to Home," and "Days, Events, and Seasons: Helping Prayer Happen."

Chapter Seven, titled "The Intentional Family: True Parenthood is a Spiritual Path" is particularly helpful for me in drawing a positive connection between the ordinary and mundane of our family life and the essential sacredness that exists right there.

In addition to fifteen insightful chapters, peppered throughout the book are over twenty-three small sections called "Taking Action: What you can do now to nurture spiritual life at home." In just two or three pages, McGrath gives the reader very practical, how-to advice on a specific topic. Some topics include: How to be a nurturing parent; How to develop your family's sense of awe; How to let go gracefully; How to educate your children about justice.

It's as if someone challenged Tom to see if he could set a world's record for packing practical ideas into 288 pages and still end up with a book that reads quickly and occasionally pulls at your heart strings. He met the challenge. Thanks, Tom! Your book is a gift to all of us parents!

Leif Kehrwald
Editor, HomeWord, a publication of St. Mary's Press
http://www.smp.org/FFLR/index.cfm?page=HomePage.

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