Our book club read the Shack by William Young. I was a little apprehensive before the discussion, because I wasn’t crazy about the book, although I know some people are. But as always, it was a great conversation with the ladies, not only hearing their different perspectives on the book, as well as an amazing conversation about our different perspectives on God, Spirituality and Religion.
One of the questions we discussed was whether we liked Young’s vision/description of God. My answer was that honestly, I prefer my own 4 year old child’s impressions of God.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite songs, by Dishwalla, “Counting Blue Cars.” It’s a song full of great imagery of childhood and adult/child interaction. When I first heard it I was reminded of summer evenings with my grandma, playing the counting cars game. But it also made me wish for a child of my own to whom I could say, “tell me all your thoughts of God.”
So I’m loving my little boy’s thoughts, like, “I think God’s house is really, really big, bigger than the whole world. And the whole world is inside it. And it’s invisible.” I wonder how to respond to his complaints that “God didn’t say anything back to me,” or “God didn’t give me what I wanted.” (what did he want? Oh, just a pet bird.) Or “God knows how to get to the restaurant, because God knows just about everything.”
It makes me laugh, it makes me think back to when I longed to have a little one to have these conversations with, and it takes me back to my own childhood, the carefree games, the incomprehensible adults, a memory of fresh air. It’s one of the most wonderful things about parenthood, that vision back into the past with new eyes, like rewatching a movie with a twist ending like “The Sixth Sense” or “Fight Club” and saying “aha”, as everything becomes clear with new meaning.
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