Dear Peanut,
I have one basic rule with you—to always answer your questions as honestly (and age appropriately) as I can. I hope that by being open to your questions now, you’ll always know that every subject is safe for us to discuss, even those subjects (especially those subjects?) that were off limits when I was a kid, namely sex and death. And God.
God. I had some awareness of a unifying presence in the world from early on. I recall being about your age and twirling on the springtime grass of the front lawn. Suddenly I stopped and looked up, and as the world spun around me, I noticed how the sunlight sparkled through the green leaves of the trees. Somehow, the radiance of the light, and the newness of the air, and the freedom of my body led me to feel that God was present. How I even knew who God was, I don’t know.
As Daddy and I raise you, I’m conscious of bringing God into our conversations. This is a break from the way I was brought up. My parents were of the generation of Jews, molded by modernism and rationalism, who didn’t talk much about God, nor, I suspect, thought much about God. The lack of information about God intrigued me enough to want to explore religion and eventually lead me to the rabbinate. I wonder sometimes what kind of impact our God-talk will have on you as you grow older.
For now, you certainly show a keen theological awareness of your own. One day, when you were just past two, we were eating breakfast and you asked, “Mommy, why do men have beards?” Following my rule, I answered truthfully: “Because men and women have something inside them called hormones that help them be men and women. So men have beard hormones that help them grow beards.” You pondered that for a while as you ate your cheerios, and then shrugged a little as if you understood, saying, “Well, I guess that’s the way God made them.”
Another time, you asked me what prayer is. I answered that prayer can be many things but for most people prayer is a way we can talk to God. Again, you gave it some thought, and then said, “But Mommy, you said we all are God, or have some of God in us, and so aren’t we speaking to God when we speak to one another?”
I think in recent weeks your moral development has surged forward and you are now struggling with some perplexing theological ideas. You’ve been talking a lot lately about life and death and the dividing line between the two. You immerse yourself in movies, and the movies you love the most are the ones that make you cry the hardest because of loss or fear (even as you know the characters will live happily ever after). You’ve also had some bad dreams lately that jolt you awake in the middle of the night.
In your own way, you are wrestling with theodicy—how can the good presence of God allow suffering and pain in this world? This is one question for which I simply do not have the answer and it breaks my heart. I can live with my own unanswered questions, but yours…they haunt me. All I can do is hug you and let you know how very much you are loved.
It is not an answer but it is a response. I hope it is enough.
I love you,
Mommy
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