Children's Spirituality part II- 101

We've all gotten those e-mail forwards about kids ideas about God, or kids in church jokes or similar, which we laugh at and send on because they're so 'cute'. In a kindergarten Sunday school class, team teacher MaryAnn asked if anyone knew where Jesus came from close to Christmas time. One little boy, eagerly shot up his hand, 'I know, I know!' "Okay, where did Jesus come from?" the teacher asked, expecting an answer like 'The Holy Land', 'Bethlehem', or 'Nazareth'. "Germany!' the boy shouted out, impatiently. It was hard to keep a straight face thinking of the Lord in lederhosen. It also reminds one how so much religious art reflects the nationality and preferences of each culture and time, as in renditions of an Asian Jesus, an African Jesus, holy scenes from the Middle Ages, and a similar phenomenon with images of the Buddha. For this reason, Islam prevents the idolatry of representation. Allah is One and Mohammed is his prophet, peace be upon him. In the Orthodox Christian traditions, icons play a large and important role in focusing one's attention in meditation and prayer. In many icons, Jesus or Mother Mary have a distinctly Asian appearance with a halo of light encircling their head.

For kids, scripture and art are literally true. One small child asked, 'How come Adam had a belly button?' when touring the art museum. The mother wasn't sure where that came from. Paintings, sculptures, music and chant were designed to teach an illiterate population with a child-like mentality. Developmentally, many haven’t gone beyond that to higher stages of reasoning. A parent might say, 'this is how the artist/sculptor/writer imagined it to be; what do you think about that?' The same applies with practices such as mandated prayer times, sitting meditation, baptism, communion, reading bible/torah/koran and holidays.

In interfaith and cross cultural contexts it’s important for children to understand that people believe and practice differently. Letting them know there are different approaches and why one's own tradition is important without making discriminatory value judgments requires care. 'Why do you wear that hat/turban/burqua?" a child might ask. Some simple answers: 'to honor God'; 'to show my respect' or 'to remind myself and others that there is a God over all things', 'to focus one's attention on God'. It might require some education or a quick Google search, which could be done together. There are other examiners for differing faith traditions who may already have addressed some of the basics. It's usually challenging enough to teach basic principles in one's own tradition and children are such an open book. A Christian teacher carefully prepared a unit on baptism for the pre-school crowd and brought her own lace cap from infancy and the certificate, now yellowed. The children were impressed, 'Wow, you must be really old,' they noted, wide-eyed.

Kids will pursue embarrassing things. 'How come you don't have kids?' a 6-year old girl asked. 'Because it didn't work out,' the mom's friend replied, cautiously. 'How come? Didn't you try to have a baby?' the child pressed on. 'My baby is in heaven,' the woman answered, carefully. 'That happened to my mom's other friend,' the little girl continued, matter of factly. 'It wasn't full grown yet. You know, you could have hormone injections . . . . What's that?' she changed the subject, pointing to an unusual gardening tool. After the death of a beautiful sheltie, a 3 1/2-year old neighbor boy asked, 'Where is your dog?' The lady replied, 'He was old and sick. He died.' The child tilted his head to the side and sized this news up reflectively. 'Oh. He was a good dog. I'm sure he is with the angels who take care of him now,' and skipped off to pick a flower to hand to the neighbor lady before he was on to join his pals play with a child sized foam football.

Today’s Columbus Dispatch 7-20-09 featured an article on The Children’s Healing Garden behind the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and at the Nisonger Center. A support group the Healing Journey for Children meets on Thursday nights for children ages 2-19 whose parents died or are suffering from a serious disease. The director of the program Pauline King said that ‘Children don’t grieve as adults do; they play.’ There are more than 13 separate family and children’s support groups through Nationwide Children’s Hospital. See http://www.nationwidechildrens.org/gd/gd.aspx?page=268 and http://www.nationwidechildrens.org/gd/templates/pages/pfv/PFV.aspx?page=255

Meditation quote for this page:

‘Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith. We must grow in awe in order to reach faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.’ P 77 God in Search of Man, A Philosophy of Judaism by Abraham Joshua Heschel