Taking the Time to Make a Difference

How did you learn to drive? That was a question that came up at a lunch time discussion among a couple of co-workers recently. “We had driver’s ed,” said the youngest one among us. “My daddy told me to get in the truck and go to the store for him,” said one of the older ones. The conversation made me think later about learning to drive and other lessons that were learned in a car. Some of us had guidance. Some of us learned by trial and error.

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The conversation also led me to recall a favorite practice in our family — beginning a journey with prayer. In our car, the four of us, two parents and two children, would pray the Our Father. Then we would ask God to bless us on our journey, and to bless each of us by name, and to bless the grandparents living or dead, and to bless everybody on the road traveling at the same time we were, and to bless our pets and maybe some other people or causes if we could think of any.

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The Zenit news agency recently reported that the bishops of England and Wales are preparing for the first National Family Week in the United Kingdom by offering some resources to promote holiness within the home. In many parts of our country, I thought, the car has become an extension of the home. The UK program aims to “proclaim the holiness of our homes as places of life, love, service, teaching, fellowship, witness and prayer,” according to the report. He went on to say that “Home is the the place where we learn how to be patient, forgiving and full of joy.” (That could be important in the family car, too. At least, the patience part!) The archbishop said, that “the home also needs to be the place where we learn how to pray, how to talk to God and how to see ourselves as a family living in God's presence.” The family car has become a place for meals between events, and for family entertainment. It could be a place for prayer, too. A house is not necessarily a home, of course. Neither is a car necessarily a place of anything more than physical togetherness. A car may even have separate “rooms” defined and shaped by the individual entertainment video screens on the back of each seat and the separate audio systems to isolate the several occupants. What is it like in your car?

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Some of us have had professional driving teachers. Some of us picked up skills on our own. Some of us have had strong experiences of family faith. Others have grown up in relative isolation from faith and relgious practice. How did you learn to pray? If you have children, do they go to “Driver’s Ed?” Do you teach them by your example? Or do you expect them to learn on their own?

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Sheila Garcia is described as a “wife, mother, commuter and associate director at the U.S. Bishops’ Secretariat for Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth.” She recently came up with “Ten Pointers for Family Prayer.” Number three on her list is to pray as a family. “Build upon rituals such as grace before meals. Encourage family members to offer thanks for the blessings of the day and prayers for those in need.” That could happen wherever you are. She also points out that “short prayers count, too,” and suggests that “When you’re stopped at a long light or put on hold, consider it as God’s invitation to turn your heart and mind to him, if only for a few seconds.” Praying to God at a stoplight is a lot better than calling down a curse on the driver that is blocking the intersection. It could make a difference in the driver’s level of tension, and in what a child learns from parents, too. For the complete list of ten pointers for family prayer, go to www.foryourmarriage.org.

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