Shana Tovah U'metukah

Happy New Year! Today is Rosh Hashanah! We aren't Jewish, but our kids go to Preschool and Kindergarten at a synagogue/preschool that we love.  They were celebrating with apples and honey, challah and pomegranate all week as they talked about the High Holiday. I love that they are/have learned about this rich and historical and nuanced religion. There is a lot of beauty in Judaism. (I can't say that, yet, about Christianity, sadly. The first things that come to my mind are…..the crusades! Hating gay people or anyone who believes differently than they do! Slavery!  And yes, most Christians today don't support two of those three things, of course. But there is still (in my mind) very, VERY much a culture of, "We are right, you are wrong, we are saved, you are not, get on board or you are going down with the ship"……and man, I just don't get how people can look at the fact that they happened to be born to Christian parents and surrounded by Christian friends, never even challenged or thought outside that bubble for a moment, and yet the entire rest of the world is wrong and hell bound. Well, isn't that just incredibly lucky for them that they were born into a family who knew the ONE RIGHT WAY! I also admit that I don't know many people who came to religion as adults…….everyone I know has simply accepted the faith of their parents, so my experience is very different than people who didn't get sent to a religious school by religious parents. I know a ton, (ton!) of people who have LEFT the religion of their parents, but few who have become a very different religion than their family of origin as adults. So, luck of the draw at birth on the Heaven card, eh? I've just never bought that. The world is too big and I don't believe in a God who would be that random and cruel.

I love talking to my kids about God, even though we don't attend Church. I hated (have I emphasized HATED) enough? The school that I was forced to go to as a teen. I know that it contributed directly to my eating disorder, I was made to feel like a "bad" Christian (and subsequently person) because I had questions about the faith…….and I look back and that just breaks my heart. What are children but little walking question marks? Who is a teen but a larger child wrestling with bigger questions about their place in their world and their identity away from their parents? Its crazy to me that just writing out these sentences, now, as a Mom, can bring me to tears. I was a good kid, an overachiever, one who wanted to please, yet I had these questions. The result of that questioning was labeling. I fully believe that there is little more disastrous you can do to a child than label them. Want to see someone live up to your worse expectations? Label them negatively. The opposite, of course, is true as well.

It is good and right to have questions. It is good and right to truly seek out how you feel about God or religion. It is good and right and a child needs safe people in their lives to ask those questions to. When questions are met with shame and guilt and labeling ~ it is extremely detrimental to everyone. I want my kids to always, always feel safe asking me any questions. All I can do is try to answer honestly, and when I don't know how to answer, try to find them someone who may have better answers than me.

I was on the stairs on Monday at the Y and had two women chatting feverishly away next to me. They were talking about going back to school for a Masters program or Undergrad left unfinished or something. One was talking about starting at Immaculata (a Catholic Uni nearby) and was saying that she had left because she had to take a religion class and she "didn't have religion". The other woman concurred, " Yeah! I could be taking yoga or cooking and I have to take religion? I'm not paying for that when I don't care about it!". I admit that it caught my attention and I've been thinking about it ever since. One of my resentments about my high school is that every semester of every single year of every single grade of 6th-12th grades I took religion. Only, it wasn't "religion'S", it was "religion: Christianity deconstructed". Whole semesters on Moses. On The Apostles. On the book of Acts. On how to convert others (Including getting to pass out flyers in malls! Like freaks! So good for young children!) I look back and think of all of those hours of my life where I could have been learning …..anything……else. Or, I could have been learning about other religions. If Indeed my school was so sure that they had the golden ticket, the one way elevator to heaven, why couldn't we have spent some time on the faith systems prevalent in other countries, or, hell, in other places rather than Suburban Philadelphia Amongst Upper Middle Class White People?

I felt a little bummed out by the conversation among strangers. I think that if MORE people learned more about MORE religions, rather than about NO religion (thus only judging them by the most outspoken and generally awful people who are the face of many religions, sadly), there may be more actual tolerance of religion. There may be more coming together. There may be more love, less hate. If we can look beyond our FEAR that our children may make different choices than us and see our children as individuals rather than people who have to believe exactly what we believe or else we.have.failed (imagine bearing that weight on your shoulders as a child?) than and only then are we actually loving and seeing our children for the unique and wonderful humans that they are. I'd love it if a child of mine grows up with religion, and i"d love if if they happily grow up with no religion. I've always been a prayer. I still pray. Not to the "handsome bearded white yet somehow mysteriously middle eastern blue eyed Jesus God". I pray to the same God that people throughout the world have prayed to, I pray because something in my soul sees something in nature and just screams "THANK YOU!", something worries about my kids or their health and screams "HELP ME", etc etc etc. I don't have just one name to put on that God. In every sacred text of every major religion God doesn't limit themselves to just one name, so why should I have to?

Ultimately the Unitarian Church is the place for us. I've found the one I want to go to ~ the problem is my teaching schedule. I may start to get the kids involved in mid week fellowship there. Because at the end of the day that is what I do love about church. Not the exclusion, not the "women can't lead, gay's can't marry, divorced people get the stink eye (yes, thats the church I grew up in)……..but the fellowship. Fellowhip and community are good. And  given the chance, I want my kids exposed to as much religion as they like, because how else can they honestly explore how they feel about these things? I don't know that we are doing it perfectly but I know with 100% certainty that we are doing it with respect for the integrity and intellectual curiosity of our children in place.

I have a phone meeting with the Aramark Food Service Coordinator /Education Division today! I'm interested to learn more about the actual policies of the school district, see if something has gone awry at our kids school, and see what can be done to improve the system.

The golf outing was awesome yesterday, Mom and I had a beautiful (if windy!) day on the course. Jake's soccer last night and a lazy afternoon made for a nice day all around. I have to take Jake back to CHOP at 9 AM, and its pouring rain, so its going to be a lazy day around here with a workout and perhaps a matinee or some muesuming with friends on tap. (Everyone has off for Rosh Hashanah).

May the sweetness of the season be evident to you today. To all of you who were never wounded by religion as kids or adults ~ You are lucky! How are you handling your kids and religion?