Spirituality & Practice

By Ralph Wang in the KidSpirit Unity and Division issue.

Throughout human history, there have been many attempts to explain society and make the world a better place. Great Unity is one of them.

According to this ancient Chinese philosophy, we will be unified when each person works happily for the public and we have sufficient resources for survival.

The concept of Great Unity first appeared in the Book of Rites, in which Dai Sheng recorded the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius. In this book, Confucius lectured on the proper behavior of humans and the ideal society, much as Plato did in The Republic. In the chapter liyun, Confucius complains that Great Unity is hard to achieve and sighs as he illustrates this concept to his student. In his theory, Great Unity describes a society in which people don’t have to shut their doors at night or worry about belongings they left on the road. The old and weak are well taken care of, and there is no war or pain. Every resource is abundant, everyone contributes to society, and everyone is free.

These ideas, in fact, have much to do with Confucius’s background. . . .

By Olivia Bailey in the KidSpirit Resilience issue.

"It’s no use to go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."

— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The entrance to Upper Upper Thrombosis is small and concealed. If you aren’t looking for it, if you don’t already know where it is, you’ll likely miss it. Jack found it a while ago, and eagerly showed it to the rest of us. It technically isn’t a trail, but we don’t really care. It’s generally untouched, leaving plenty of snow for our skis to find purchase on the slick ground.

It's an ordinary Saturday . . .

By Moolie Griminger in the KidSpirit Money and Value issue.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying my religion and its values. My family is a member of the Conservative tradition of Judaism, which is usually thought of as the “in between” form of Judaism.

Judaism is a big part of my morals and daily life. I attend synagogue frequently and I study in a Jewish day school.

The Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible and the raw text that Judaism revolves around), teaches a lot about what to think of wealth and what to do with it. It mentions ideas about giving to those who are less fortunate and how to do so. In modern Judaism, these ideas have turned into the concept of tzedakah. Giving tzedakah usually refers to putting and collecting money in a “tzedakah box” and giving it to a charity. Since I was very young, my parents have encouraged me to participate in this tradition, and that’s the foundation of my other ideals about wealth that my parents have taught me.

My parents have contributed fundamentally t . . .

By Abraham Weitzman in the KidSpirit Resilience issue.

My family places faith in DBT — Dialectic Behavior Therapy. DBT is based on a combination of accepting your feelings and behaving in a positive way.

For my sister, who has depression, this means acknowledging her sadness and leaving the house for school or work. For me, it means accepting my physical disabilities and doing what I love. The important word is "and" as opposed to "but." "And" shows that the feelings and actions have equal value, whereas "but" implies the actions outweigh the feelings.

DBT teaches skills that are guided by principles. . . .

By Skyler Sallick in the KidSpirit Simplicity and Complexity issue.

From a young age, I have worked to piece together my unique spiritual beliefs from aspects of my surrounding environment, particularly from my various educational experiences.

I entered my first Montessori classroom at fourteen months old, each chubby roll of my curious body enticed and fascinated with the classroom. Montessori, a non-traditional form of education, centers around enhancing the fundamentals of child development through lessons that focus primarily on the intersection of kindness and compassion with community engagement. When I had not yet graduated from the quintessential Montessori lesson of the “pink tower” (a set of cubes that need to be stacked in size order) and learning the alphabet through tracing sandpaper letters, I thought of respect of others as a simple facet of daily life, something that was part of every decision I made and every interaction I had. Gradually, the curtains closed on my belief that kindness and compassion are uncomplicated; social behavior is more complex than innate qualities and emotions. No longer believing them to be the simple foundations for life as a living being, I walked down the seemingly endless, window-lined hallway of my Montessori school and grew conscious of the intricacies of kindness and compassion in our ever expanding and interconnected world.

My early years immersed in the Montessori . . .

By Grace Snarr in the KidSpirit Power issue.

Power is not given; it is within us and cannot be taken away. This is a great responsibility and privilege, one that we humans sometimes abuse.

Dani* and I were best friends. We would hang out almost every weekend, and don’t even mention summer! We talked, laughed, and ate together like sisters. We trusted each other enough to read the love letters we sent to our crushes (or imagined and hoped to send). When tragedy struck, we rushed to comfort each other.

After about six months of camaraderie . . .

By Sanya Kochhar in the KidSpirit Numbers & Symbols issue.

India is a composite culture, an amalgam of heirlooms left by the various civilizations, empires, and religions born here.

Aside from the rich cultural heritage, there are priceless pearls of wisdom that continue to be passed down through the generations, even today. These heirlooms have grown to be an important part of our lives.

The diversity of my country’s populous . . .

By Eliza Moore in the KidSpirit Human Dignity issue.

We walk with it.
Backs straight and eyes fixed to the air,
As if receiving some great knowledge that can only be found
In the shallows of the swelling sky.

There is music in us.
An old, viscous longing to go back to the beginning,
When we were young
and indistinguishable from the promises of earth.

Now, new walls shudder into being,
Rising and choking.
They blind us with masks forged from uncertainty,
The root of desires long suppressed.

Some of us move with arms outstretched,
Feeling for the presence of other shadows in the dark.
When we find each other,
We pull back the curtain of differences
like strings of candy-colored beads,
And see clearly.

We find we are the same.
Made of a luminescence, throbbing and pulsing,
Calling out for the vulnerable,
The recognition of history,
The serpent of memory writhing in our veins.

We walk with it.
Dignity.
All the walls crumble to the ground
And we are not afraid.

When she wrote this poem, Eliza Moore was a 13-year-old eighth grader at The Center for Creative Arts in Chattanooga, Tennessee. At the time, she loved reading, writing, and visiting the ocean.

By Akash Mehta in KidSpirit's The God Issue.
(click on panels in body of text to see larger versions)

What does it mean to live a good human life?

There, in a sentence, is perhaps the most important question a human can ask. Without an adequate answer to it, life is meaningless; we have been struggling to come up with one since our very inception. It is the question that has given rise to the entire field of philosophical ethics, the question each one of us must ask ourselves and try to answer in order to live a human life at all.

The most common and natural way to answer this question . . .

By Marwa Alalawi in the KidSpirit Power issue.

Flickering streetlights streamed into my aunt’s bedroom as she hushed my cries with gentle strokes, tucking me into a sea of white linen.

It was my first time sleeping at her house. My aunt, who had no children at that time, wished to spoil me by having me spend the night.

don’t remember what nightly hour had crept upon us . . .