Well, my newly-minted five-year old son Sammy floored me with a question the other day. Usually, I can be pretty unflappable about his relentless quest for knowledge and understanding but this one about knocked me flat.“Dad,” he asked. “Does God break wind?” That isn’t exactly how he asked me, but you get the idea. After pausing to regain my balance, I responded by telling him that if we were made in the image of God, then I suppose you could say that breaking wind was invented by God. And I might have mentioned something about thunderstorms, I just don’t remember. You can laugh, but how many of you would have done any better?
Sammy has been really exploring the idea of a higher power, and doing so in that delightful combination of seriousness and absurdity so characteristic of fiver year olds. The other day, lugging his birthday-present-new, monogrammed & overstuffed pilot’s case up the stairs, he was calling out for assistance; “help me, God, help me!” Not for Dad, but for God.
He wants to know about God’s family. “Does God have any sisters or brothers?” then he looks at his eight-year bold sister Lily, and I suspect he’s hoping the answer is no. He wants to know some of the specifics of God’s working day. “Is God everywhere at once? Even in Florida? Even at Montessori?”
The wife and I come two different spiritual persuasions. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sammy, who is really all about understanding what he has in common with God. Do they like the same foods? The same baseball teams (Red Sox and the Marlins)? The same kind of candy?
I think the boy is onto something. Me, I worry that mankind has gone too far around the bend to warrant divine intervention anymore. We kill in the name of God, hate in the name of the higher power. We thank God for the ability to make obscene profits and don’t feel called to share our good fortune with others. We believe that God has made us stewards of the environment, so we turn up the heat like the climate was a global hotpot. We really believe that there is a line drawn in the cosmos by God where the love between two human beings can be parsed and parceled out based on gender and preference. But not Sammy. He knows love when he sees it, and love is what counts to him. I know, because a half-dozen times a day, he grabs me and hugs me and tells me he loves me.
His construct of God allows for the leaving of treasures on the sidewalk for him to find as we walk home from school. Sammy’s God is part buddy, part ever-present, and can be found in the dancing greeting of his dog Rufous when we get home. Sammy knows Rufous is getting a little older, and can conceive of a time when Rufous will “go to God.”
“I will be very sad that day, very sad,” he tells me. He pauses, shaking his head sadly at the thought of the loss. And then, he tugs on my sweater and says “Dad, after that happens, can we get another dog and a hamster?” He doesn’t sweat it; he knows the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, and can therefore be expected to giveth again. As an adult, I do sweat it, because I never know if at any part of the deal I will deserveth.
Sammy is teaching me about God. He teaches me to find the joy in each new discovery, to find the newness in each experience. He teaches me to listen, to play, to respect the process of learning and growing. Above all, Sammy teaches me about the sanctity of questions, of faith.
And for my wife and I, we have come to realize that Sammy and Lily are both our prayers, and God’s response to our prayers.
So here we are, the 21st century family, all under one roof. Christian and Jew, neo-pagan and Buddhist student, spiritual explorers and meditators, participants in men’s and women’s spirituality groups; trying to find out what the rules are and live them fully.
Did I just hear thunder?
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