Books |
What is God?
Etan Boritzer
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Children
Our daughter is of the age to wonder why. And because the God Question is about the thorniest we expect to face, we have been looking for a Good Explanation.
I started by relying on personal knowledge. Since I was old enough to question, I’ve been reading about religion and spirituality. You name it, I’ve probably read the basic texts. And, by profession, I sort of know how to tell a story.
So on Easter Sunday, when the little one asked about the egg roll, I saw an opportunity to explain about a more significant roll — the rolling of the rock from Jesus’ tomb.
Two sentences in, she walked away.
And I got it. Talking about God is like teaching a kid to swim. It’s not a job for every parent; it’s surely not advised for those parents who are, like us, still searching. So we started looking for a book.
And now we have one.
When the time comes, “What is God?” will be our First Responder.
It is short (32 pages), with a lovely water-color on the left hand page of each spread and three or four short paragraphs on the right.
It could not be more straightforward. On Page 1:
Maybe we can’t really talk about God
Because maybe we can’t see God
Or maybe we can’t hear God
Or even taste or smell or touch God
Maybe we can only feel God
Like we can feel love
Or like we feel happy or sad.
From there, Etan Boritzer takes us back, to a brief history of belief, focusing on the image of God as “an old man, with a long white beard.” Next time you’re on an airplane, he suggests, look at the clouds: “You won’t see that God there/Because no one has ever seen that God!”
Maybe, he proposes next, God is an “eternal mystery.” Then again, “some people think that there are teachers/Who have been able to solve the puzzle.”
And now, for those who have a strong personal belief, we’re on dangerous ground. Organized religion can be like organized sports; people tend to root for their home team. Which makes them hyper-sensitive about anything that looks like “criticism”.
After Boritzer takes children through the great religions, he jumps right into the hot zone. He notes that sometimes, “people of one religion want everyone/To know ‘What is God?’ in the same way/That they understand God.”
What these people don’t understand, he says, is that “Most religions are almost the same!” That is, they tell you to be good to others, not to lie and cheat and steal. And if more people thought about that, maybe we wouldn’t have so many “fights” about God.
The book closes on a high note: the forms of prayer and the good fortune of living in a country where there’s no official religion. And then, perhaps the highest note of all:
So when we pray to God,
When people of all religions pray to God,
We are really praying for that feeling,
The feeling that connects all of us.
When we pray to God,
We are praying for that feeling of love
To come to us and to everyone we know,
Maybe even to all those people we don’t know,
So that we can be happy together, or apart.
Lovely stuff. Hard to disagree. But on the last page, Boritzer will drive some parents crazy — and thrill all whose sympathies lie in the East:
So, if you really want to feel God,
You can close your eyes now,
And listen to your breath go slowly in and out,
And think how you are connected to everything,
Even if you are not touching anything.
That’s pure Thich Nhat Hanh Buddhism.
Propaganda? In this house: practical wisdom. I mean, I’ve seen it work. Once, when our daughter was so unhappy she was blubbering, I put my hand on her chest and said, “I can’t help you when you’re crying this hard. You’ve got to calm down. Here’s how — take a big slow breath, then let it out. And again. And again.”
Our eyes locked as we worked together. In a minute or so, she was herself again.
In the absence of another “proof” of God, I suspect reading a book that returns a child to herself — to the magic breath of life — would serve our daughter quite well.
To buy “What Is God?” from Amazon.com, click here.
