Sunday, November 2, 2003

Big Questions

My daughter is at an age when she starts asking some really big questions. Here's a sample dialog from our house:

Fiona: Are there beds in heaven?
Rachael: Yes, there are and you can jump on them all your want.
Fiona: Will Roni [a neighbor girl] die soon?
Me: No, no. People don't die until they are grown up.
Fiona: So when I grow up, I'll die?
Me: No! Well, not until you are old.
Fiona: Why do people pray?
Me: Because it 's the only way we can talk to God. No, scratch that. There's lots of ways we can talk to God. Or a higher power.
Fiona: What's God?
Etc.

The problems is I don't really have answers for any of these things myself. While I try not to lie to her, it's hard to present a traditional view of heaven and God when I have my serious doubts about them myself. But the complexities and paradoxes of my own beliefs are way too complicated and ambiguous to present to a three year old. I can't exactly remain silent, as I want to, and as the Buddha did, when asked if there was a God. It is very hard to put your personal cosmology into terms that a toddler can understand.

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