Betsy Shaw
posted in Mom Stories
Lying in bed next to Isla last night after our post-dinner frog catching session, with the last light of day peeking around the edge of the curtains and straight into her wide-open eyes, Isla asked
“Where do people come from? Where does the grass and the flowers come from? Where did I come from?”
I opened my mouth to speak, though I had no idea what in the world I was going to say, and she continued,
“God is very talented, isn’t he.”
“Well,” I stalled, and fought the urge to ruin her reverie with what is by now, after 40 + years of wondering myself, a steamer trunk filled with doubt,skepticism and, mostly, confusion about just this very topic.
“Yes,” I agreed, “He is very talented.”
I choked a bit on the word “he.”
This isn’t the first time Isla has asked these questions. And this isn’t her only question:Along with where did it come from, she usually asks, “What is it made of and how did it get here?”
Then she always ads “I really want to know,” said with the baffled frustration more befitting someone who has been on this earth far longer than her six short years.
The only thing she hasn’t yet thought to ask is “Why are we all here?”
If and when she asks that question I think my head will pop off.
The challenge these questions pose has nothing to do with “the talk.” Isla is not, regardless of how she phrases her questions, asking where babies come from.
No. Her questions may sound matter of fact, which would lead one to see them as scientific in nature. But they are also, in my mind at least, spiritual, if not a bit existential. When I read this back to myself, I realize I might be projecting my existentialism on her. Perhaps all she really needs to hear about is cells and atoms and elements…
Either way, her questions are hard for me to answer without finding the word God fighting it’s way from the back of my throat to the tip of my tongue. So what is the problem with using God as an explanation? Well. I don’t really believe God made the world, and the people and the grass and the trees. And I haven’t found the theory that he’s still around watching us to be plausible for a long time.
The God explanation just doesn’t sound right or sit right with me. I feel like a fraud talking about God. And I especially don’t like the way we give God human qualities, and a male gender. I feel uncomfortable using God to explain every little thing, as if everything has some sort of higher meaning. But I feel equally shortchanged when confined by the limits of science.
Where in science is there room for fairy houses?
As fascinating and beautiful as the story of creation is, evolution fascinates me even more. And it explains a lot. But not everything. It doesn’t explain the beginning. Not for me. Big Bang?
Needless to say, we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about God in this family. Ian is a self-described atheist. I’m somewhere on the wavering agnostic scale. Both of us grew up going to church, but neither one of us is inclined to spend much time in one now.
Yet still, Isla, our daughter, comes up with this phrase “God is so talented,” when she notices something special or beautiful, again and again. All on her own. At least I think she came up with it on her own. I suppose it’s possible she could have heard this expression somewhere….
Heathen or no, it makes me smile to hear my daughter say “God is talented.” But it also makes me feel a bit funny and as if I need to figure out where I truly stand. Sometimes I challenge her and say maybe it’s Mother Nature who’s the talented one. But mostly, I am waiting and watching to see where her clever little mind leads her.
For does what, or who, we give credit to for this amazing world matter more than the fact that we simply take notice and feel the undeniable desire to give credit at all?
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