Christian Practices and Living Theology

I've been trying to think of practices unique to Christian faith communities. For instance, prayer, fasting, reading holy scriptures may be communal faith practices for spiritual formation but they aren't distinctly Christian. Crossing yourself is but Catholics and Orthodox do it differently. Protestants don't do it at all. Taking communion (I think) is distinctly Christian. Reading the New Testament? Wearing a cross? Prayer beads? Or maybe they don't have to be distinctly Christian so much as to carry meaning and our response to God in the world.

Ritual, tradition, icons, candles, crosses, robes aren't the substance of our faith but the question hovers whether these are important tools for imparting faith to children because they are "concrete", tangeable, and touchable. What do the scriptures say? The tabernacle, Passover, the Feast of Booths all had some very concrete (kid friendly) elements.

In our house, we didn't utilize religious tradition or ritual when our kids were growing up. A young 20's said it isn't ideologically lining up that's so difficult, it's seeing people she loves, knows and respects walking in deeply rooted faith (despite their short-comings); wanting what they have and feeling like it's always just out of reach that makes embracing the faith of her parents so hard. Her parent said, what do you say when you thought you kept all the stumbling blocks off the road? Did we miss something somewhere? But that's what they mean in this chapter about explicit and implicit. You think you're doing what you're doing to send [THIS] message but it may, in fact be sending the opposite message. Anyway...