What is it about?

The rollercoaster adventures of parenting three kids, dealing with disability and mental health - and discussing disability discrimination and how to tackle it.

Monday 20 October 2008

Mixed up

Life at the age of nearly eight must be confusing.

The boys go to a school that is a bit unusual. It's run by a lovely mob called The School of Philosophy and I could probably best summarise them as Christians that follow a Guru from India. Combining the best of the East and West, and all that. So the boys have been introduced to this concept of "God" and some various off-shoots such as Jesus, Mary, Noah, and Moses and such figures. All of which get mixed up (once Possum insisted that Mary was God's mother and Moses was his brother. Hm).

At home we are Buddhists, and as such, we don't believe in an external entity called "God". We strongly believe in Karma, and off course Reincarnation.

We talk about religion regularly. At school the kids read the Bible and the Badvad Gita , and regularly encounter stories from the Aboriginal Dreamtime. We explain to them that there are many other religions. Beaver has a godmother who is Tibetan Buddhist and a godfather who is Jewish, and Possum has Tibetan Buddhism and Amanda Margi followers as godparents. We're trying to find a Christian and/or Muslim to take on a similar role for Boo Boo - but that's another story for another time. We tell the kids the Divine is a treasure, and there are many different treasure maps for people to find their way, and they will all have to find their own in life. This in fact is very easy to explain when you have walkers, wobbly walkers and wheelchair users in your family. One can just run up, the other needs to take the stairs with railings, and the other takes the ramp, all to get to the same place, all in a way suited to who they are.

The boys have a bit of a thing about arguing who and what they believe in. Generally Beaver is a God follower, while Possum goes for Buddha. Except if their brother states a strong opinion on the other idea, in which case they are both happy to switch sides just to be in opposition to their sibling. Yep. Sibling rivalry trumps religious loyalty every time.

Anyway.

Beaver has been thinking about the whole "why do I have CP " thing a fair bit again. Since I told him in our latest discussion that it's not his fault he has CP he's been very interested in finding out whose fault it is then. He wasn't too happy with the explanation that in a way it was Mummy and Daddy's fault, because he knows we didn't consciously chose this for him, and if we could take it away, or take it ourselves, we would.

So yesterday in the car, Beaver said to Possum"

"It's God's fault that I have CP. He made me like this. I do hope that he will not give me CP in my next life though, I'm really fed up with this CP thing."

Who said all these various religions can't happily co-exits? Even in the mind of a nearly 8 year old...

2 comments:

Danielle said...

I love your blog. Hope you don't mind, but I linked to your blog at mine, River of Jordan http://theriverofjordan.blogspot.com.
For lack of a better term, I have a list of great "Mommy Disability Bloggers." We have to stick together!!! :)

I look forward to more great posts from you.

fabig said...

Aan deze reactie kun je zien, dat beaver toch echt goed over die dingen nadenkt, die jullie (jij) hem vertellen. Heel lief van hem en heel heel goed gezien.