kids and parents and God

It’s Christmas. For us that means lots of religious customs. We’re religious folk, AA and I. Our sense of spirituality is bizarrely similar, given that we were raised with fairly different approaches to it. We love tradition. We love dark churches lit by candles. We love Latin chanting. We love a quiet session in the Adoration Chapel. We love private prayer. We love our parish {see article I wrote on it here}, the same one I was born into, and now the same one our children were! Spirituality and religion are so profoundly personal. And not everyone wants a sense of either. And many of us are still on our journey of either/both/one. Given that each person has a particular journey, why start religious instruction early for children? Why not let them choose their own path when they are old enough to be interested in it? Why foist your views, or lack thereof, on an impressionable young mind? We have opted to start religion for our kiddos from the get-go for five basic reasons: 1) Give a baseline for later and more nice people in their lives for now. I hope our children always feel and think their faith and beliefs, but even if they change their course or adopt different beliefs, they have our heritage as a baseline. Even if only for cultural references. The gift of access to faith, encouragement in faith, and exposure to people who believe in things (that takes a leap!) is a beautiful example.…