Of Such is the Kingdom

We have a bedtime routine where, among other things, we pray for people we know. I have a laundry-list: immediate family, grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins...

Ian lists a significant number of classmates, including ones who aren't particularly nice to him, as well as his teacher, our priest, and family, along with others from time to time.

Daniel, until recently, has been a minimalist (or maximalist, if you will), praying for "Everybody." But sometimes his litany becomes an endorsement: "People who make Batman movies, people who make Batman books..." - something along those lines. And sometimes family members. And sometimes other people.

At other times, the boys are more Rumsfeldian in their litanies: "People we know, and people we don't know..."

Last night, Daniel prayed for "Spanish people."

***

When Amy's father passed away, a couple of years ago, at least one person we know was quite horrified that we had every intention of bringing the children to the funeral with us. We don't hide or obfuscate death, even though we also don't harp on it (in spite of my Irish upbringing). When the occasional guinea pig dies, I spirit its earthly remains away to the Back Woods Pet Cemetery, as it might be called, without giving anyone a chance to be traumatized, but when a loved one dies, we don't go into the same kind of vanishing-act mode; the event is too important to gloss over or distract around.

Of course, the children's participation in the funeral was what I would have expected. The funeral was graveside, with a closed coffin, on a nice September morning in Connecticut, and the boys devoutly picked grass during it, while Madeleine mostly circulated.

But most interestingly, the rabbi incorporated their presence into the eulogy. He said it was good to have children at the funeral, and that there's a Jewish tradition that God, hearing children playing, moves from the seat of judgment to the seat of mercy.

***

One ongoing issue is the commemoration of bad-guys. Daniel has sometimes added bad-guys to the petition - I think with a sneaking suspicion that he must be doing something wonderfully naughty. But with Christianity, things are sometimes not so cut-and-dry. He may have been taken aback - along with Ian - when I actually encouraged him to pray for bad-guys. "Love your enemies and pray for them," might be summed up, by a 21st-century five-year-old American boy in the terms that Daniel uses in this matter. Yes, we pray for bad-guys, and try to love them even if we - or most of us over five - don't consider them role models.

Of course, there's the old story I love to re-tell, where Daniel was wearing a Spiderman costume with a Batman cape one Sunday morning, and I said, "Daniel, you have to get dressed."

Daniel asked, "Can't I go to church like this?"

I told him he couldn't.

Daniel asserted, "But Daddy, God fights the bad-guys just like the superheroes do."

At this point, Ian piped up, "No, Daniel, God doesn't fight the bad guys; He tries to get the bad-guys to become good guys.

That hadn't occurred to me, but I was thrilled that Ian understood Christianity better than I do.

(March, 2011)