Take the case of my friend, whom I'll call Simone. Simone grew up a stone's throw away from the West Virginian mountains, and her hometown was traditional United Methodist. But because it was also a college town, and her Dad was a professor, Simone always felt as though she got just the right dose of skepticism and faith. She wanted the same experience for her two kids, six and four years old. But not only had her perspective broadened with adulthood, life was also different for her children than it had been for her. For one thing, she was troubled about the church split over gay marriage. For another, her kids were born in Dallas, Texas — a far cry from small-town Methodism. Moreover, Simone was divorced shortly after the birth of her second child; the women of the church were mostly married, traditional. Ditto when she moved to Jacksonville, Florida.
There were uncomfortable moments, alienating periods. But Simone says that things worked themselves out because she and her church community were guided by what they'd been taught from childhood: love, tolerance, service. "It's funny," she recently wrote to me, "but when you're raised on an idea or concept, all the answers to the thorny questions are answered when you need them to be."
EXPERTS ANSWER KIDS' TOUGHEST QUESTIONS
So, what are you supposed to say to your kids about God, exactly? Here are some tips from various religious leaders, gurus, and scripture itself on raising spiritually connected children. — Susan Gregory Thomas
· WHY SHOULD I HELP OTHERS?: SpiritualParenting.com founder Mimi Doe says: "Kids long for connection with others more than another new toy, as hard as that might be to believe," she writes. "What one kind deed might you do today with your child? Bake an extra loaf of banana bread for an elderly neighbor, write a thank you note to the bus driver for always smiling in the mornings, invite the child who is new in town over for a play date?"
· WHY DON'T I GET WHAT I PRAY FOR?: James 4:3 responds: "You ask for something but do not get it because you ask for it for the wrong reason — for your own pleasure." The idea is that we pray to get closer to God: to find out what we should do to be in sync with the flow of the spirit. If we ask for help, we will get it, though it might not be the kind we asked for. It might be much cooler than anything we could have come up with ourselves.
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Humiliatingly, my response is one of abject self-pity. How come I had to grow up with a black hole gnawing at the pit of my soul, and she didn't? How come she gets to pass along the sense of tradition and answers to thorny questions to her children, and I don't? Same thing with the case of another friend, Stacey. A mother of three in Glendale, California, Stacey grew up in Hawaii, and was active in Protestant youth groups, even as her Catholic-born mom dabbled in Buddhism. Throughout her twenties, she herself practiced Buddhism before she ultimately decided to adopt officially her husband's faith, Judaism. But it was the richness of the Jewish family traditions — celebrating the Sabbath together every Friday night, attending temple as a family, Hebrew school for the kids — that compelled her to convert. Stacey's connection to God, Lord of the Universe, Higher Power — all that — was already firmly entrenched in childhood.
So, here's a question for first- and second campers: Is it necessary for one's connection to God, and the spiritual/religious customs that one might adopt for the sake of family bonding, to be strictly intertwined? To the observant, this probably sounds like straight-up sacrilege. You can't just swap out religious tenets because you feel like it! Otherwise, what's the point of religion at all? But if erstwhile nihilistic Gen-Xers turned parents do, indeed, want to include a sense of faith and tradition in the raising of kids — but need it to feel real, authentic — then another point is: If you got belief, then it's all good.
In the case of my children's father, this point stuck hard, even as it backfired. A lapsed Catholic, he couldn't countenance the Church of his upbringing. At the same time, no other religious tradition felt legitimate. Even when I joined an ultra-progressive, Protestant church whose mission he supported, he could never bring himself to go. "I know it sounds dumb, but it just doesn't feel real without the Stations of the Cross," he said.
