As the parent of two wee ones, I am facing a conundrum.

I was raised in a marginally religious settling, we went to a not too intense protestant church once a week and didn't talk much about it outside of that. I went to bible school, informal and taught by volunteer laypeople and did my best to listen.

Problem is, the christian thing just doesn't do it for me anymore. Maybe the concretists and hatemongering conservatives pushed me over the dge. Maybe it was the stupid creation myth that never realy satisfied anyway (wait, what? we are wicked and sinful, and that is why we are here on earth, to suffer because that stupid twit of a bimbo betrayed us. boy, that sure is inspiring).

Anyway, the conundrum is that I do think kids need some of that developmental structure, and culutres need their myths and legends, and kids need to process through them. through something.

However, science has put us in the bind that we know our myths now are just that, and we are out of practice in telling our kids myths that have a purpose. and then out of practice in rights of passage to grow them out of the myths and into adulthood.

This stuff has all been well research from Joseph Campbell on down.

This Christmas the toddler was old enough to wonder what all the fuss was about. Lacking a thread to attach it to, we sort of make up some cherry picked jesus stuff. which works for now. we struggled whether to propose santa as real, which I think we did by default. the reason for the event was easy enough, it was to celebrate the idea of jesus. nothing wrong with that.

But lacking a script for the long haul, it is tempting to opt for a watered down christian-lite type of thing. which is unsatisfying.

I am not going to make up my own cultural system. so what to do?

Beining neither secular (by which I assume you mean agnostic) nor a parent.

But the usual course is to take them to some main-stream church that doesn't tax them over-much, and then let them find their own way. This has, ahem, mixed results.

But all such parenting paths have mixed results. I recommend that you teach them in the ways of Odin and Thor. Then they will grow up to raid the Frisian coast, which, I am told, is rich in plunder.

gotta be better than leaving it to Mickey, Barney, Bert and Ernie.

Put your kids up for adoption. Maybe a good family will take them and give them a good home.

Jack

Good question. I raised my kids sans religion. They did go to some church camps with other kids whose parents were force feeding them religion. I don't know what the answer is but do what you think is right, living a lie is not good. I think taking them to art museums is a good trick to exposing them to religion. When I took my daughters to the louvre and prado, they got an education in Christianity just by looking and asking about all the paintings....

Why, exactly, do cultures need their myths and legends?

You can't go wrong with facts and they don't have to be boring either.

We stopped putting up a Christmas tree a long, long time ago realizing that most of the Holiday was a farce. However we did adopt a Solstice celebration of sorts.

Mind you I have my beliefs and the Bible does condemn sun worship...what we did was borrow the customs and enjoy the history of the moment. History is history and it tends to be absolutely fascinating.

While the kids were still at home this book helped me to take a direction that I will never regret. Matthews and Wife are both PHD's if I recall correctly.

We had some absolutely magical moments staring the stars and so some reenactments of the Shaman's ceremonies and the sunrise vigils.

In the mean time the kids learn the accurate facts about the Holiday season and it's origins.

The celebrations suggested therein are a great deal of fun and as well as historically accurate.

We all need a sense of origin to fulfill the spiritual need. I say spiritual not in the sense of religious or religion but in the very real sociological sense of spiritual.

I went with my kids to a Unitarian Church so that they could learn about religion in a way that questions all belief systems.

Much more fun and many more Holidays.

So we celebrated the Holidays with: "some believe this, but we celebrate because it is fun!"

Hi Sarvis;

Just asking the questions in the best interest of your children

displays your good intentions of parenting. I look for inclusive

rather than exclusive teachings...I tend to give all sides (that I

can find and that they can comprehend) of a subject and most

importantly (to me) is I find something new when what I was

doing stops working.

You will do great!

kim

Of spritual. So, um, you're a druid?

While reserving judgement, what manner of celbrations do you conduct at the Winter Solstice?

Speaks of desperately trying to be joyful.

I didn't know Unitarian churches still existed. You're such a relic. Of like the 70's/

That is a good question, but one I don't have time to address this morning. Probably deserves its own thread.

However, I have put a lot of thought into this and am pretty comfortable with the premise of the post.

I will clarify that while cultures perhaps don't need myths, but I believe that kids do pass stages that are mythical, magical, etc.and this serves as building blocks to reach higher level spiritual development. Ever heard of spiral dymanics? I buy iinto some of that stuff.

Also Paul Shepard. (ie Welcome to the Pliestocene) He nails it for me.

What cultures need is unifying themes. I believe they get these by being composed of a majority of people who passed through their childhood developmental stages in healthy and successful ways.

When culture "killed" contemporary organized religion (in my view rightfully) for its unsustainable magical thinking, the problem is we didn't replace its role with something else. Modern religion itself had replaced past religions that served similar roles, but this time around there is nothing. New age transcendence type stuff is trying, I suppose.

I believe, as do Joseph Campbell and Paul Shepard, that this role must be fulfilled somehow, and as Shepard points out (and Robert Bly cribbed), societies that are composed of people who have not been through the healthy development stages and lacking the glue of religon tend to be pathological.

See Paul Shepard: Nature and Madness.

!

Don't worry, Sarvis....you Marxists have your own religion, you just don't realize it. It seems to consist primarily of three core beliefs:

1) That capitalism and mankind's creativeness are really threats to our survival rather than benefits to humanity, and will destroy us through "Global Warming", an "oil war" or some other such nonsense.

2) That the Revolution Of The Proletarate is imminent

3) That only the white horse (sorry, Rev. Wright) of socialism can save us. It Takes A Village to build a benevolent police state, after all.

MoveOn.org is your Bible, Obama is your messiah, and conservatives are the Devil incarnate. You should not be confused about what to teach your kids at all. in fact, I'm sure they are getting a heavy dose of it already........

something in the air
by Sarvis
03/29/2008, 10:13 AM #

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yeah, we are on the cusp of a wrenching cultural experience. the recession will be the trigger. I think the middle class and the apothetic class is about to blow their tops. could be a good thing, a rejection of some of these excesses and bullshit of the last thirty years.

I have had many heavy dreams of late too. lots of betrayal themes.

even though I'm not secular and my kids are grown and I wasn't a very religious person during their formative years.

I learned to sing in Sunday School. I learned to sing harmony in church. I learned to read music in the junior choir. All of this education was free. Most of my best friendships were created in Sunday school.

I learned volunteerism in that church. I developed a sense of social responsibility. I learned how that could be fun and a way of sharing good times with friends.

I don't think my father really believed in God. He rarely spoke about anything in a biblical context. I never saw him read a Bible and he read a lot. It was us kids who established the saying of grace at dinner. Getting kids to think about being thankful for anything is really quite an accomplishment.

Children take their cues about religious dogma from their parents. Exposing children to Buddhism, Judaism, or even Wiccans would probably satisfy your requirements for a open and sceptical mind while broadening their foundation of understanding.