beautiful monsters

Kids. Huh.

I don’t know where they get it from. I mean, this is the church where the minister is a lesbian and the resident theologian writes books with titles like Christianity Without God. This is the church where members of the congregation appear in the paper wearing T-shirts that say “Jesus Loves Hookers,” and the parents paint banners and march against America’s wars. And yet, the kids somehow end up with an image of Jesus as this glowing white guy with long hair and a white tunic. Show the kids a picture of Jesus as an African man, or a woman, or a picture where he looks tired and battered and worn down, lacking that certain glow, or a picture where he’s dressed in jeans or standing in a breadline... and they don’t know quite what to think. But they’re getting used to it. Anyway, last week no one liked the poster of Jesus in the Wilderness. Well? You wouldn’t look pretty either if you’d just spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. So today I thought we’d talk a bit more about what Jesus might have been like (really, I’m sure we covered this last year).

So, I had a bunch of pictures of famous (and not quite so famous) faces, and told the kids that each one was like Jesus in some way, and different in some way. Mostly they answered the way I expected them to. Aragorn is a king returning to claim the throne, but at first he appears humble, but Jesus probably wouldn’t have had a big sword like that. We went through Mother Teresa, Te Whiti, even Sir Peter Blake (hey, he was killed and he was doing good work). But my favourite answer of all came when I held up a picture of George Dubbya..

Me: So, what does this guy have in common with Jesus?
Child: He wants to change the world?

Hee... so true.

After church we had a picnic, and I hung out with the most gorgeous little baby, but in the process I discovered something rather embarrassing; I can’t blow raspberries. Seriously, I don’t know how! I try, but I just make this “pfft” noise and the baby cracks up laughing and blows perfect raspberries back at me. She’s eight months old for crying out loud, and already she’s better than me at something! I think she’s catching up with the piano playing too – she was composing some great works today – real original.

Posted by Fionnaigh at March 7, 2004 10:36 PM