Phew!!! We’ve almost made it through third term and so far luck has been on our side and we’ve managed to get by without being outed as Godless heathens. I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to pull this off really but so far we seem to be slipping under the radar just nicely… either that or every other parent is as apathetic as we are towards religious education and our theologically ignorant son is fitting right in! The kids have religious education several times a week, say Grace before lunches and prayer time every day. His teacher tells me he often prays for "Mummy to get her back all better" and it seems to give him a little comfort to think that his little prayers to God must be helping because "God always listens to our prayers" – no mention of whether or not he ever acts on all that listening. Ah well…God bless his cotton socks đŸ™‚ If wishing would but make it so…
Every now and then we have some mention of religion and/or God on the drive home from school and I’ve very studiously avoided either reinforcing or contradicting the God Bothering that Angel is getting at school. These conversations usually go something like
Small Child: "Do people go to Heaven when we die? Is Poppa in Heaven?"
Mom usually answer something like: "Well some people believe we go to Heaven when we die, some people believe that you get reincarnated when you die which means you get born again into another whole new person and other people don’t know what to think."
So I try to answer him truthfully… it’s not hard to be creative with religious semantics when you’re conversing with a 7 year old. I am sure he’ll make his mind up in his own good time. Let’s just hope when he starts discovering some of the errr…. loopholes that most scientific and/or independently thinking people eventually come across, that he doesn’t cause as much trouble for his teachers as I did.
Small Child Quote of the Week:
"God is all around us and He made everything, all the flowers and the trees, and all the people and the animals…. but not the play gym – that was men made."