Conversations With God

As our family sat in Midway Airport one afternoon last summer, I turned toward my 7-year-son, who was suspiciously quiet. He sat a few seats away from me, eyes closed and hands folded, his lips moving silently. I was too astonished not to interrupt him, to confirm what I thought was happening. He opened his eyes and said earnestly, in response to my query:

"I'm praying that our plane will get here so we can go home."

We'd traveled a lot this past summer, including a sojourn to Chicago to drop off our sons to romp with their cousins while Bob and I recharged in Canadian solitude. Allen had just spent two weeks with my mother, who has few questions about Who is in charge. She is serious about her Pentecostal faith, serious about a God who cares as much about a late plane as about peace on the planet, and who, in counting every hair on her head, surely has time to attend to her personal concerns. I was glad my boys had spent two weeks in Vacation Bible School, something that, as Unitarian Universalists, they would never have a chance to do. I saw no harm in their getting a healthy dose of the same traditional faith with which my mother raised me. At least I thought that's how I felt until I saw my child in prayer.

I had not realized how affected I still was by my own childhood resistance. A religious rebel since the age of 10, I detested rote prayers, I resented recitations of the Our Father said more out of fear of hell than the love of God. The idea that some prescribed prayer was better than my own stumbling conversations with God always disturbed me. The idea that I had to pray, even when I had nothing to say, disturbed me more.

Continued on page 2: »