Liv n' God

I started trying to post about this weeks ago, but haven’t really had the traction with the issue to move very far forward. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and haven’t yet come to much resolution.

A few weeks ago, Liv spent a Saturday night with her grandparents. Tricia and I were attending a wedding that Liv was invited to, but which would carry on well beyond her meltdown zone, so the grandparents, bless their generous souls, drove out to the wedding site to pick her up mid-reception.

On the Friday evening before the wedding, my mother-in-law sprung a little surprise on us. She wanted us to pack Liv some nice clothes as she would be attending Sunday school before we picked her up.

Now, I’ve known for a long time, even well before Livvie was on the way, that religion would be an issue with my extended family. They are very traditional Christians, led by my mother-in-law and her sister’s family. I am not, by a long shot.

My religious views are difficult to articulate exactly – I was raised a sort of general Protestant Christian, attending Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodists churches. I was baptized in a Baptist church and confirmed in a Methodist church, the latter of which I was active in to the point of once delivering a sermonette to the congregation. I stopped attending church in my late teens, however, and embarked on my on religious education, spurred mainly by the illogic of condemning Jews, queers, Muslims and others to hell. I’ve read a ton of Hindu texts, much of the Koran, work by Jewish scholars, Buddhist texts, and have come to believe in the Truth they all hold in common and vehemently resist the efforts of any to say they are the only way to access that Truth.

Which, y’know, is a damnably difficult position to present to a three-year-old, but one I know I will have to present as an option to balance against the other viewpoints Liv will encounter.

I just hadn’t expected her to encounter those other viewpoints quite so closely, quite so soon.

So, anyway, the surprise was popped and Daddy capitulated. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t come back from one day of Sunday school calling Jews the “Christ-killers.”

Now, my daughter, she asks a lot of questions. I mean, duh, she’s three, but there is just a constant patter of inquiry pouring out of this kid. I try to be as respectful as possible of her questions because I want to encourage her inquisitive nature, but the strings of “why” questions become a bit hard to handle. Like, why a word means what it does. She just isn’t satisfied with an “I don’t know.”

Post-Sunday-School, the questions have become significantly more daunting.

More than anything, she just seems to want to understand who this God character is that she has heard so much about from grandma. My belief in a non-personified God is a little abstract for a three-year-old, but I’ve just plunged in headfirst. Mainly headfirst, anyway. I haven’t tried to directly address her limited understanding of the personal “He” God, but I take pains not to validate it, eschewing pronouns entirely when we talk about God. But, I have tried to present the idea of “God as everything” as best I can. As a result, our conversations often devolve into:

“Are you God, Daddy?”

“Yes, I am part of God.”

“Is Spikey God?”

“Yes, Spikey is part of God.” I declined to point out that our cat, Spike, also is a sizeable portion of the devil.

“Are the trees God?”

“Yes, baby, the trees are God.”

“Is God nice?”

“God is love, babygirl. God is all the love there is combined.”

This might all be deflecting the questions that Sunday school and her grandma’s general God talk brought up, but, with the possible exception of the very last bit, I can’t help but feel it isn’t very helpful in terms of general spiritual education. I feel like I am very much failing at that, and maybe even that it was inevitable given my tendency to deconstruct existing religious messages instead creating or pursuing any nourishing spiritual narrative.

And, I’m not sure what to do about it.

This past weekend, Tricia was visiting friends in the Boonies and Liv and I took a walk to the playground a dozen blocks north of us. Ballard is known for its concentration of churches, and we passed now fewer than four starting up, letting out, or in full swing of worship services. And Livvie asked me when we were going to church, and why we didn’t go to church.

My first, internal reaction was along the lines of “why in the hell would we?” I’m on the far side of what the churches we passed want to offer, or at least believe I am. I silently cursed my in-laws for bringing this kind of question down on me, as I’m prett sure it wouldn’t have occurred to Liv otherwise.

Then I remembered some of the positive experiences I have had in church. The sense of community I felt in the Methodist church, where I cleaned up after vandals and served pancake breakfasts and helped with the toddlers, or the power of a weekly reminder of the size of the universe and the existence of love. I remember the utter rejuvenation I felt walking out of Glide Baptist in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, led by an inclusive preacher and a choir like I never knew existed.

I have gotten where I am in my spiritual understanding not by being told a truth, but through the living of my experiences, which included church.

I don’t think I am suggesting that Tricia and I are going to sign up for Mars Hill Church and start teaching Livvie to hate the gays like the Bible says (though a couple passages after the one fundamentalists claim demonizes homosexuality points out that the smell of a burning bull is perfume to the nose of God, and burning a bull carcass sounds kinda fun), but I’m wondering about my deficiencies in spiritual education and the value of participation in a regular spiritual exercise like church (is supposed to be).

While I’m wondering, I think perhaps the best I can do is not deflect difficult questions but rather point to Liv the aspects of God that appear to us every day.

“Livvie, the Republicans lost control of the House and maybe the Senate today, and Donald Rumsfeld resigned, and that makes me happy.”

“Is God happy, Daddy?”

“God is happiness, babygirl, all the happiness that exists combined.”