Let Us Pray

On my family-style blog (the "other" blog) where I refrain from cussing and being crass (http://www.risdonnews.blogspot.com/), I gave the following account of a conversation in our house today:

Sam (bouncing while he's talking): "Mom can I play some Playstation?"
Me: "Maybe after breakfast. But STOP bouncing."
Sam: "I only bounce when I'm asking a question and I want the answer to be yes."
Emma: "Oh, like when you ask 'am I a poop?'"
Sam: "What I meant is when I want the answer to be good. OK fartface?"

I wrote at the end: "Is fartface a bad word?"

Immediately the grandparents wrote back and said that, yes, fartface was in fact a bad word and that perhaps it was time for the kids to start going to Sunday School.

As if Sunday School is the answer to everything. Admittedly, we don't go to church and never have as a family. I grew up Unitarian with ultra liberal parents. We celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah. My parents taught a sex ed class in our living room to my brother and his 7th grade friends. I came down one night to see a slide of a big, hairy penis covering the entire living room wall. My friends and I stuffed the question box with queries like, "what is a fetish?" My brother and I travelled to Israel alone with a priest named Father Paul when I was 15 so we could do a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and learn about the three big religions that have created such unrest in that part of the world.

My point is - my parents were all about openness and deciding for yourself. I think that's wonderful. I also think that it can be confusing. When you are left up to your own devices to figure out the world because you are basically told it's yours to figure out without any guidebook (i.e., Bible) it can be overwhelming.

I've tried many churches - Catholic, Unity, Unitarian, Methodist, United Church of Christ to name a few. I've never taken communion. One time I went to the UC of Christ and was the only one there not taking communion. Someone actually came up to me and asked if I was physically unable to walk and needed help. I never went back.

I have tried for so long to figure it all out. That is, where I fit, what I believe. Every time I decide, I can do this, I can just be Christian because then I will know what to believe and I will belong somewhere, I just can't fully do it. Maybe I am trying too hard to want to believe every little part instead of just taking the ideas as a whole.

Don't get me wrong. I would consider myself a spiritual person. I believe in God in a less traditional way that might be a subject for a future blog. I meditate, I pray sometimes. I see goodness in the world and have gratitude for the gifts and blessings in my life.

So it's not like we want our kids to grow up immoral and messed up. Hopefully saying "fartface" isn't an indication that they'll go to hell. In fact, Emma said to me the other day that if she had three wishes, one of them would be that people would not start wars because they believe different things about God. Rock on sister!

Back to the idea that Sunday School/church is a panacea. Don't we all know many the messed up person who went to Sunday School? Certainly this may be a place to learn and to grow spiritually. But to say that without church you can't be a good person, cannot have the proper guidance, cannot live a solid life in which you are doing the right thing and espousing values of compassion, gratitude, civility, and kindness is just untrue.

Fartface, fartface, fartface, fartface, fartface, fartface.