As Todd said, we went to church yesterday morning. I'm a little embarrassed about it, I have to admit, because religion makes me uncomfortable. While I think in theory it's a fine thing, in practice a lot of people seem to use The Lord® as a bludgeon.
The impetus is that Thea has been bringing home God-talk from school recently. Nothing too dramatic; she thinks it's all a bit like Santa. It occurred to me that I don't want the kids' experience of religion to be someone's justification for hate, intolerance, or a narrow view of culture. I want Thea and Liam to understand that religion is stories we tell ourselves to give meaning to our lives, and no matter what they believe or don't believe, there are lots of equally valid experiences and understandings of existence.
I guess that's all a pretty tall order. This whole experiment may be a complete failure, or we may lose interest soon, who knows. But at least I think we found a church that will do more good than harm. The reverends quoted e. e. cummings and Thoreau, and talked about the Resurrection as a metaphor for hope in hopeless times and tied it to the anniversary of the war. The kids sat pretty still, mostly because someone gave us stickers, coloring pages, pens, and small toys, and no one glared at us when Liam slid to the floor for a better view of people's shoes. And the organ is supposed to be one of the biggest in the country. ( ... Heh.)
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Church is an odd place for an atheist
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11 comments:
Sorry, but I just can't get behind any belief system where the deity in question lacks even rudimentary tentacles. They don't even have to be made out of spaghetti.
One of the places I screwed up in raising my children was not to trust my kids to have brains of their own. If I had it to do over again, I would probably add some "Bible stories" and the equivalent "intro to world religions at the wee small stage" of all the major religions to the list of "read at bedtime" books.
Daniel in the lion's den. Sampson and Delilah. Christ's sermon on the mount. Moses the stutterer. The human agony of Christ on the night before his crucifixion. Buddha weeping when he left his perfect world. Ganesh riding around his parents on his rat while all the other deities were racing hellbent around the earth itself.
It was unnecessarily difficult for my kids when they didn't have the foggiest notion about the flood stories - and all the major religions have flood stories.
Just no easy answers for parents, I guess.
We go to Quaker meeting and there is a great variety of belief there. Most people share some Christian values but others are pagans, or practice meditation, and others are non-theist. The kids often have interesting discussions because some have declared that they do not believe in God and others believe in a very literal God. It's fascinating.
Oh the irony.
This was the first easter in many years that I DIDN'T go to church.
Just not feeling it at the moment. Go figure.
I like Grandma's thought on introducing to all religions, which is one of the reasons we have though - if we did go to a church it would be a universalist church. We haven't gone there yet, but have thought about it. Good for you for at least checking it out and seeing if works for your family.
P.S. There is a liberal church down the street that we have considered... they had "Thou Must Go Seeth An Inconvenient Truth" on their weekly sign when Gore's movie was out, and frequently have funny things like that up. I dig a place with a sense of humor!
I like that one of the reverends is a woman, and that both of them are Unitarian. We've talked about getting involved with the local Unitarian church for the kids. It's hard for me, I'm deeply intolerant when it comes to religion, but I don't like the idea of my kids growing up and being labeled the ones whose mom is a Jesus-hater (I'm not, but I can see how a plausible argument could be made when 65-70 percent of the families around us attend church weekly). We never went to church when I was a kid, but my mom finally took me to an episcopal service when I started asking about Jesus in the third grade. What about attending a Baha'i service somewhere?
The naturalist reverend does not sound all that bad, but I think I'll probably lean more towards M attending with friends or family if he shows an interest.
I have attended Christmas Mass as an atheist, but the church, music and lights were all so pretty that I focused on those aspects.
My (very, very, very limited) experience with Baha'i is that it's rather culty. One of the things I like about this church is that there are other atheists in the congregation, as well as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus, to round out the Christians. And there are a handful of gay couples with kids, which is important to me.
Echoing grandma's comments, it was an error not to expose my daughter to a variety of religious thought. I was so determined to give her a cross-section of life experiences that I totally neglected the philisophical. She turned out well despite my failings, intuitively grasping the differences between an innate spirituality and external didactic or catechism. Still, giving religion context, as philosophy or history or myth or other choice seems to me to have value -- good for you for coming to terms with that early on.
I find myself mulling over this issue - A LOT. Thankfully, my best childhood friend is a minister, so we go to her church. I trust her judgment and know that we have similar views, so it makes it easier. The real impetus for going, though, is to expose Bug to church. I think the stories are good. She's asking some interesting questions, too...like "what's God's last name?" and "why doesn't God go to church?" I'm stumped all the time. Last night she said she has decided that God's last name is "Swing batter batter." Works for me.
I was raised with no exposure to religion...my parents thought that it was a personal decision that they didn't wanto make for us. I don't regret their decision now, but I will admit that having faith during dark times is more difficult I think because I was never exposed to a higher belief. Sounds like you are making the best decision for your family.
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