This Friday we have an interesting opportunity. We are meeting
with a group of about 40 Muslim girls at a local Mennonite camp to play together and
learn about each other. The Muslim group initiated this. They want to know: what do Mennonites believe?
We've gathered a
group of about 12 Mennonite girls, youth, and moms to meet with this group. I
offered that we could teach them Giant Dutch Blitz (a rambunctious, active game
that will have us stumbling all over each other in the gym). I warned Sultana,
one of the leaders, that this won't teach them about our faith - just might
show them how competitive Mennonites can be when we're playing games.
Sultana also
mentioned that she wants a chance to hear about what we believe. This is the
piece I've been pondering for the last few days. How do I summarize our beliefs
in a way that 12-15 year old Muslim girls will get something out of it, and that our girls will feel it represents them? How
do I boil the complexities down into something simple and palatable?
When I asked my
own girls what our church believes, these were their responses:
[9 year old
daughter] shrugs shoulders
[6 year old
daughter] "What do you
even MEAN?"
[me] "I mean what do we believe
about God and about us and about the world?"
[6 year old
daughter] "What does
'believe' mean?"
[me] "Like what you think about
God."
[6 year old
daughter] "Doesn't
EVERYONE think about God?"
[me] "Maybe. But what do YOU think
about God?"
[6 year old
daughter] "That God wants
us to be nice?"
[me] "OK - anything else?"
[6 year old
daughter] "That I can
talk to God and God made the world and wants people to get along."
I came away a bit
puzzled as to why these questions were so confusing to my daughters.
Admittedly, we don't often talk about our beliefs. I believe that actions speak
louder than words, and hopefully my children are "hearing" some of
our beliefs in action. I hope that they're absorbing faith by osmosis,
understanding the gifts of hospitality to both giver and receiver, the
importance of being generous with your love and compassion and money, the ways that we can work to bring about a more peace-filled world.
Derek and I
pondered this over sushi last night. At what age do we label our thoughts and
actions as "beliefs"?
One belief that I'll put on the table right now: that children are born with an innate knowledge
of God, and sometimes we squash it out of them.
I want to be
careful that I'm not extinguishing my daughters' own unique theological thoughts,
connections to God, beliefs - whatever you want to call them - about who God
is, and who they are in relation to God. I don’t want to pile on cement-like
heavy beliefs so that it’s hard for them to excavate down to the ones they find
life-giving. I want to learn from them because I intuitively know that sometimes
they're better connected to that Spirit than I am.
I know that my own beliefs have changed over time, and I suspect/hope
they’ll keep on changing. But the task at hand for this Friday remains the
same: how do I present a group’s beliefs
in a way that feels authentic and real?
I think I'd be curious to see what children that age would present if they were asked to describe God's dream for the world, or to draw an image of that dream. Or perhaps what they see as being like God's dream, or what is unlike God's dream. And perhaps what does it mean for us to be a part of God's dream for the world? What does God ask of us? Most young children have a concept of a dream as something ideal or special, whereas the word belief is, as you noted, less understood. Just my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea, Carrie - I definitely think that they could speak to that. I'm still torn as to how to briefly present our beliefs to a group who may have limited understanding of our faith - how do you summarize it in ways that aren't pithy, and that will ring true to the girls who are coming with me? I'll be curious to see if any of our girls feel comfortable to answer those questions instead of me answering for them...
ReplyDeleteNot an easy task to say the least. I too would be interested to hear what happens. The Mennonite tradition, in my experience, has not always provided children (and adults) with a really good model for faith sharing. I do not wish for us to turn to a model of testimony that simply states the day on which one was "saved", but I do wish we could create more space for sharing the stories of our experiences of God, thus enabling us to reflect and articulate our beliefs with more depth and sensitivity.
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