Friday, September 1, 2006

As summer winds to an end

I find myself to be in a state of some peace, but in a place of emotional dullness as well. But that might be all the painkillers I am taking for a wicked toothache.

I spoke to my niece about baptizing her daughter. The father wants to let the child "find her own religion" later, but I agreed with my niece when we spoke about it. Religion is a dialog with God, and in some sense certainly that dialog is not fixed in childhood.

But dialog needs language, and if you never learn to speak the language of God, how do you learn to have dialog with him? I told my niece that I felt faith gives a person the abilities and skills needed to discern the meaning of life (which is not forty two, in my opinion.) How do you learn to travel through life's passages without the language and poetry of the rites that accompany it? What would a funeral mean to you, or a wedding?  Leaving a child to "find their own religion" is like leaving them to find their own language. They may learn other languages later in life, but doing so certainly is not easier for them if they are mute!

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