I don't really question it for myself, but for my family, my children. And in that, the question becomes what have I done for them? Now don't get me wrong, the kids were both baptized, and went to Sunday school for quite a few years. They have attended many services, weddings, funerals, even pastoral installations for goodness sake, but, in more recent years, things have been semi inconsistent. So on further examination, my question becomes, what faith have I grown them in? How will they answer the big questions as they get older?
If push comes to shove, and I am really faced with my own self, and my own thoughts and beliefs, and deep truths, I'd say they have been raised in the faith of family. But what makes it so hard to accept that is that I only know how I came to my own peace with faith and higher power from my own experiences. And I came to most of my faith and understandings in and around regular, old church.
As an elementary aged kid, not only were Friday sleepovers better because you could watch Dukes of Hazzard, but also if you had a friend sleepover on Saturday night, Sunday church was de riguir. In high school, Saturday nights out with friends were shrouded in the wet blanket of knowing that no matter how late you were up, or out...no matter how few or many VHS movies were rented or watched by the group, I would be expected to be up, and out, and functional for pew time, and Sunday School, complete with Bible Trivia, Sunday morning.
At the time it was a chore, and in college it was mostly abandoned, with the exception of a few trips with a friend to the on campus chapel, and several desperate "Please God let me not be pregnant" moments.
Still, all my life, no matter how long I am away, I have had that draw. I crave chruch at times. This time of year, fall, with November's reflection, and then December's waiting and anticipation. Sometimes, just to sit in a sacred place is peace for me.
And I want that for my kids, I want them to feel. I want them to have a deep inner draw, but at times I wonder, what will be their deep inner draw be?
Does my seeking out of "regular old church" happen because of the way I was raised, because of that pew time entirely, or in part is it just who I am, what I am?
And therefore, with some, but less, and more broken pew time, will my children feel the same pull?
And do they need to?
Will they want to?
I guess, this is really where faith works its way in. I have to have faith that they do have something, and that all their life they will have something, and that they will find their own way. But at the same time, and with my outwardly confident but inwardly quaking, questioning self, like so many things in parenting, I just want to know.
We joke that CBS Sunday morning has become our "church" these days, after finding our local church just wasn't meeting our needs. And sometimes I think that, maybe, our children will take more from that. From "Family Church" times. We sit and watch, and are inspried in myriad ways; politically, musically, artistically, and surely spiritually. When they have those short segments that speak to basic human kindness, I always catch my son's furtive glance. Is mom tearing up? Is this hitting her? I know that is part concern, part worry, but also part barometer. Should this hit me? What does she feel? Do I feel the same? Should I feel the same? Isn't that an education? Isn't that moral guidance? What else are we looking for in religion? In church? Spiritual Education? Moral Guidance? Quiet? Peace?
I am reminded of a fireside song, from my church camp days..."Seek and Ye shall find...knock and the door shall be opened...ask and it shall be given and the love will come a tumblin' down." I suppose that is where I need to let it lie for now. In the seeking, I will eventually find. And so will they, as so many have before them. And they will make their own sense of the world, and of religion, and of faith. There will continue to be my husband and my influences now, and myriad influences as they begin to make their way out into our world. And I need to, and DO trust, that the roots I have given them, we have given them, may be different roots, but are roots that in one way or another will surely help them grow.
And as we continue to seek, and to find, I know, the love, as it always has, will continue to come a tumblin' down.
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