Guided meditation on darkness - Any ideas?

[aquinnah]

We are celebrating Yule in my circle tonight - Saturday - and I am doing a grounding meditation to start off the ritual. We invite friends, family, and post a few flyers so we get new folks in off the street, too. There are always children there, with various experience with ritual (some have been coming since day 1) and we do the first half of our ritual in darkness. The theme of the guided meditation is darkness, the darkness of the Solstice, darkness within, the darkness of the Mother's womb, etc. How can I do this so that it isn't frightening to young kids? Any ideas???

[Rick]

Children in circle can become a sticky wicket... my older children (now grown) attended our circles when they were still living at home, as did the children of family & friends... they also went to church with their mom... they were taught that being in circle was exactly like going to church, that they were expected to be quiet & respectful... I've visited circles where some children continuously ran in & out... I find that to be very distracting... generally speaking, I like the idea of children in circle, but sometimes the rite being performed can be a bit intense, or boring, etc for children, especially small ones... some rites should be grown-ups only (say, 13 & up)... sometimes it's a good idea to get a sitter... we also occasionally arranged for childcare for the group, if we were going to be in a place that made it feasible...

In this particular instance, I'd either go with the sitter idea, or think of a way to modify the rite, like maybe being in dim light, instead of being in total darkness... or maybe give the children penlight flashlights...