This small book encounters Teilhard de Chardin's thought that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. The author states that how we balance the scales of human experience and spiritual experience often finds us out of touch with the sacred within and around us.

Jeanne Nieuwejaar, Unitarian Universalist author and minister, addresses these questions: Where and how do we encounter the holy? Where and how do our children feel its call, its majesty, its strength? To what extent do we and our children know ourselves to be spiritual beings? She writes that, even as we are surrounded in our living by incredible heights and breadths of thought and experience, art and science, we are impoverished if we lose touch with the holy within and sacred around us. She reflects on the religious spaces and sacred places that may be public and communal or intensely private in our homes, faith communities, and towns. Particularly in the midst of our increasingly secular culture, she reminds us that we need the discipline of setting aside time each week to renew and reconnect with the spirit.

Nieuwejaar calls for parents, educators, and ministers to be intentional in the religious community to nurture the spiritual life of children. The faith community transmits the tradition, ritual, and stories of the faith, but most importantly the central religious qualities of love and care become real only as they are lived, tested, and deepened in relationship with others in community. She concludes that "those families who are cultivating the habit of churchgoing are giving their children a precious gift - a gift that enlivens their childhood and provides deep and sustaining roots for the future. This simple habit...values connections to a religious community that can be life sustaining and life transforming."

The Gift of Faith is highly recommended for parents and religious educators, ministers and congregational leaders, new Unitarian Universalists and longtime members. These eloquent and passionate words call families to religious commitment, spiritual mindfulness, and intentional participation in the fiath community of their choice. This inspiring new book is available from the UUA Bookstore.