Pure Heart Intro

Ok, friends! First, congrats on getting your Virtues Tree done and up. Woo hoo! We all would love to see what you’ve done, mamas, so please share a picture and tell us a little about it if you have a moment, ok?

So now you’re ready to roll with your first Virtues Tree virtue? Awesome!

Are the kids begging to get started? Hahahaha.

There’s something about the anticipation that the Virtues Tree builds in my kids that’s brilliant. Mainly because it’s visually front and center for them, they’re ready to get busy and won’t let me slack (too much). It’s great!

First step is to introduce the virtue of a Pure Heart. You can call it Purity too.

The Ruhi lessons we use for our children’s Virtues Classes begin the intro with prayers, “in order to attract Divine blessings.” Sweet! So, do that. We did in our children’s class, which is where I first introduced the virtue to my own kids. If it were just our family, I’d Intro the fruit on a weekend when Dada’s at home after our family’s morning devotions.

The Ruhi lessons suggests the prayers that begin “O God? Educate these children…” and “O God, guide me...” both of which I love and are ones many kids first learn.

Another prayer that’s *perfect* for this theme is:

“He is God! O God, my God! Bestow upon me a pure heart, like unto a pearl.” – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

If you want to sing the above prayer, these are lovely melodies:

Track 1 from Soulrise Melodies vol. 2

Track 1 from Love All the World cd

For older kids or your own personal memorization challenge, there’s this beauty too:

“Create in me a pure heart, O my God, and renew a tranquil conscience within me, O my Hope! …” – Bahá’u’lláh

You can find the full prayer here.

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Now it’s time to introduce the idea of a Pure Heart as the first virtue you’ll be working on. Drawing from the Ruhi curriculum’s intro, here’s basically what I shared (if memory serves – or maybe this is how I intended to share it! lol).

Imagine it sprinkled with the kids’ questions and thoughts on the topic. Feel free to introduce the idea however you like.

–> suggested script, if you like this sort of thing:

“Do you remember how in our class on the Manifestations of God we learned that our hearts are like mirrors? The Manifestations are the Primary Mirrors that reflect God’s Light to all of us. And each of us can reflect the radiant Light of God too! Anyone remember the quote that we learned about that?”

Sweet voices raised up with:

“A pure heart is as a mirror.” – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

–> if you haven’t done the Manifestations of God lessons, just start here & sprinkle in the above quote:

“Today we’re going to learn more about our pure hearts, which are so much like mirrors that we need to keep clean so they can reflect that Light.

“See, hearts that can be hidden behind the layers of negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions that can build up throughout our days. What are examples of these sorts of things? (and the kids offered ideas like bullying and not sharing…)

“So how can we keep our hearts pure? (kids ideas…)

“Yes! By growing our love, turning to God through prayer, and taking care not to let negativity get stuck inside us but rather flow through. Then our hearts can continue to shine like a brilliant star. And that creates a gift to ourselves, our family and friends, and the whole world. So take care of your Pure Hearts, kids, and Shine!”

Either now or as you’re going through life and trying to put the Pure Heart into practice as a family, explain the Pure Heart Start idea to your kiddos. We’ve found this super-helpful in our home.

We all have a Pure Heart Start to (most of) our days. Life is like a game where every now and then we get stuck by the negative. That’s when we need to go back to the Pure Heart Start. Once there, our positive energy flows again and moves us along.

I like going straight from the Intro into sharing the Inspiration. This is how we do it, whether we start a new Virtue in our family’s morning devotions on the weekend or at a children’s Virtues Class.

But how to make this Intro fun?

We’ve done things like adding “prayer gems” (glass beads) into a Prayer Gem Jar or giving kids “prayer pills” (gummy bears or m-n-ms) to power them up to share a prayer or to reward them for saying one. All fun.

But, this morning as I lay in bed, I thought how sweet it would be to transition from the Intro to the Inspiration with something like this:

“Ok, kids, now that we know what a Pure Heart is, let’s start our journey to explore it deeper by finding our Inspiration Map to guide us.

“Remember in Mary Poppins, when the kids are given a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down? Well, let’s sweeten up with a spoonful of honey to help us prepare for the Divine Medicine from the All-Knowing Physician, ok?”

Now give each child a spoonful of honey!

After all, aren’t there many stories of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá showering sweet treats on children as a sign of their love and mercy?

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