Abraham has been asking me a lot about "God" lately. This thanks to a religious and verbal carpool mate. It first began as Abraham telling me "You know God makes the rain" and similar comments, which I ignored. It's not that I don't want to educate my kids about religion and it's not that I want them to feel the religious alienation I felt growing up as a Jewish Catholic in the South. It's just I was kind of hoping to not go there yet as I really didn't have my answers prepared.
Finally, I say to Abraham, "you know, not everyone believes in God. Some families do and some families don't. " Of course everything to a 5 year old is black and white and he doesn't grasp this. So asks me to tell his friend that "God isn't true." Not exactly the message I was going for.
Yesterday, in preparation for attending a Passover Seder I tried another angle. "You know how some songs can be the same song but sound different?" I could come up with no examples as this was a borrowed story from a friend who sings a lot more than I do. He pretended to go along with it. "Well, religion is kind of like that. Many people have different stories to explain things. "
Basically, we've had a lot of discussion and all Abraham has gleaned is that our family kind of sometimes believes in religion and sometimes kind of doesn't. God could be a man or a woman. He's going to emerge with an even murkier belief system than I have. Maybe the Easter Egg Hunt we're hosting this weekend will clear things up a bit.
Angelo's contribution to the discussion: "What's God?" To which both Abraham and I began to try and answer...
2 comments:
Ha Ha! I've had some questions lately and luckily, the girls don't care enough to listen to me struggle through the answers--they get bored! Here's my creation story...some people think God is a big creature who made the earth, but Papa and I believe a big star exploded and made lots of little planets, like Earth, then tadpoles came and then dinosaurs and then humans!
I just saw this, Karen. I like it!
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