Right now, I'm trying to ignore the woman here in the coffee shop who just stepped on my foot and is talking at the top of her voice about some kitchen appliance she got for Christmas.
I've discovered some very interesting things. At least, I think they're interesting. One is that there is definitely more to my two little brothers than meets the eye.
The older one, the one we call Adrian, is actually a very intelligent character. I've always suspected as much. This afternoon we spent about an hour or two discussing some very complicated subjects concerning God, humanity and the universe. He was explaining to me about a book he'd been reading called, "A Wind in the Door." The only problem was that, whilst he was trying to explain all these very interesting, very complicated things to me about this book, the smaller one, Matthew, kept interrupting with very interesting, very complicated questions and suggestions of his own. They were endless; he'd barely finished asking one question before he had another he was just bursting to present to us. Needless to say, this was quite frustrating for Adrian, who has a minuscule store of patience for his little brother.
Our discussion centered around our relationship to God and His to us. Adrian told me about Meg, who as a character in this book, was given the job of naming stars. Each star was a person, an individual. Someone asked her, "how do you count the stars?" and she replied, "they don't need to be counted, they only need to be called by name."
That, said Adrian, was very like how we are to God. We are all of us human beings, a species. But to God, we are each individual, each our own entity. God loves all humanity, but He has a specific love to give to each of us, as we each have our own specific identities. Like the words that make up a prayer, each one is individual and means something different, but in all, make up one prayer.
Now, Matthew and his endless flow of questions.
A friend of mine (one with whom I have a very complicated relationship; from the sometimes insensitive and ridiculous things she claims, I've learned quite a lot) once told me that the adults from her family's Catholic Church kicked her out of Sunday School because she asked to many questions. By that she meant to tell me that she was just too smart for them; she asked more questions than they could answer, and even answer clearly and intelligently.
I came back to that this afternoon, trying to keep up with Matt's barrage of constant inquiries and suggestions.
"What does God look like? Why can't I know what God looks like? Why can't I be a god? How does God make everything do everything? Why am I what I am and not a tree or a lightbulb or a cloud? Why do people make God look like an old man? Maybe God doesn't have a beard, maybe He just has a mustache. Couldn't He be a young man and not an old man?" He opened a can of pop, and the edge of the pop tab cut his finger. "Why did God make that happen?" "Why can't I choose to be something else and not myself?"
Now, how do you even BEGIN to answer questions like that? Especially when he has about a million more? How do explain about free will and choices and existence and anything outside of our own time, space and reality to a nine-year-old? How could you explain it in words and ways that would make him understand and pay attention?
So I wonder at my friend and her statement. I wonder at how she believed she was just too clever for her religion teacher. When religion is such a broad, mysterious, sometimes unexplainable, incoherent topic. When you put a curious, knowledge-hungry nine-year-old child with a boundless imagination and the very simpliest and yet unfathomable of subjects (that has confounded many a brilliant theologian) when it comes down to it, how many of us have that bottomless store of patience?
Religion is never as simple as it seems.
