Is There a Heaven? Uh...
How to explain God to kids, no matter what your beliefs.
by Susan Gregory Thomas
January 5, 2009
You might think that his is an extreme example of a first-category camper: someone whose faith was stripped, left only with religious trappings. But here's the interesting thing: of all my friends and family, he is perhaps the most grounded in faith. In fact, when I was in my twenties, and having panic attacks about life after death — wildly grasping at any answer — it was his sureness of the soul's eternal nature that quelled my terror. For him, this was shoulder-shrugging territory.
What first- and second-campers have in common is that they're bilingual, in spiritual terms. Even if they tinkered with, or scrapped, their religion of origin, they know the milieu of higher communion like they know English and another foreign language. They can pick and choose whatever customs and traditions feel good and right for their families, because their relationship with a Higher Power is already real and authentic. If the rest of us want real and authentic, we've got to train up before we go religious tradition shopping.
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· WHY SHOULD I CHANT?: Shoba Narayan, the Beliefnet columnist of "A Contemporary Hindu," writes that teaching children prayers that are specific to their needs is invaluable. This way, children learn how to use prayer as a familiar, comforting mode of discourse — just like talking. There are also practical benefits. "If your child gets scared of the dark, help her with a psalm or prayer that addresses her fears and to chant it every time she walks into a dark room," she writes. "If nothing else, chanting will distract her from her fears."
· WHY SHOULD I MEDITATE?: In Buddhism, karma is the operating principle. In parenthood, this translates as a discipline strategy. One of the only recorded lessons Buddha ever taught his son, Rahula, was the law of cause and effect. "The single most important lesson parents can convey to their children is that every action has consequences," writes author John Bullitt in Frequently Asked Questions About Buddhism. "Each moment presents us with an opportunity, and it is up to us to choose how we want to think, speak, or act. It is these choices that eventually determine our happiness." (Think about that in your room for TEN minutes.)
· WHY SHOULD I PRAY IF YOU DON'T?: The Talmud — that official record of rabbinic discussions addressing Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history — poses the question: What is a parent obligated to do for a child? It answers, essentially, nothing the parent doesn't do him- or herself. If you mess up, admit you're wrong, apologize, and try again. The point is not to try to be perfect; it's just to try at all. Who do you think you are — God?
At least, I feel like that's how Martin Buber might have felt about it. Buber is one of my favorites from Philosophy 101, and if you're feeling a little rusty in that department, the basic drill is this: Buber was an Austrian-Israeli-Jewish philosopher, and his seminal work, I and Thou, argued that most of the time, we relate to other people, things, and events in the world as "it" — that which is fundamentally outside of ourselves — which he characterized as I-It relations. In our communication with God, however, it is the deeply personal, mysteriously interconnected relation of I-You that is activated. We cannot pursue it because it is already within us; the only requirement for connection is the willingness to listen.
I find comfort in this, because I guess it makes me feel like: a) I have a shot at the God thing; and b) I don't have to do, or grasp at, anything that feels unsettlingly false. I can just be open to the conversation as it unfolds. As it happens, it began with the birth of my first child. I'd always been a fourteen-hour-a-day working reporter and the essence of a non-believer. But the moment the doctor placed this child at my breast, and we gazed at each other, I was hit: This is the exact person I've been waiting to meet my entire life. When my second child was born, I thought: I have known you my entire life. And three years ago, when my King Lear-like father died, essentially, in my arms, I was hit again: There is nothing but love; the rest is only fear.
So, when my children and I talk about God, we talk about love. When we are mad and strike out, we are ignoring God for the moment. But we can always go back, and when we do, we feel better because then our hearts are restored to normal. When we talk about life after death, we say is that there is nothing to be afraid of. Our bodies are our bodies, and they are good and useful while we are alive, but the bigger deal is that we have always been together, and we always will be. And that feels real and authentic, because I just know, in my gut, that it is the truth.
©2008 Susan Gregory Thomas and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Susan Gregory Thomas is an investigative journalist, broadcaster and the author of Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds. She has written for U.S. News & World Report, Time, the Washington Post and Glamour. She has two children, seven and five years old. |
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