Saving Grace: Children and Spirituality

Shanina:
Spirituality is like, *you*, because like you are nothing without your spirit. And your spirit is sort of like your soul.

Leah:
Well, I think it means like "God" kind of, and to get more into it, like love, life, truth, soul, spirit, mind, principle.

Andrew:
It's this "person" in the sky. A special person that made, made...

Helen:
It means like what you believe in. And um [cute shrug]

Rachel:
It means God is within you and he tells you to do the right things so you could be righteousness.

Brandin:
[answering: Who is God?] I've seen a picture of, not exactly of Jesus, but just like long beautiful hair and just a good smile and great skin.

Walker:
He comes from heaven. He's the one who created all of us, he's the one... people who obey him go to heaven. It's a place where you're never sad and you never die.

Shanina:
God lives in the sky, he lives in heaven. And he sort of, not exactly controls your life, but he created you, sort of. I mean like he's the reason you're born, because God created Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve created everybody, and then everybody created everybody, and then my mom was born, and then *I* was born.

Galen:
Well when I lived in California I didn't even know there was something called God. And then when I came here I saw that a lot of people believed in God and I started figuring out who God was 'cause my best friend believed in God. So I sort half do and half don't.

Dominique:
Well, he is up in the sky, he's in out space and you can't see him, but he's there though. And God, he has man friends too, he has Santa Clause...

Allison:
I think God is like both a boy and a girl. There'd be like a girl god that was like in charge of the girls - if there wasn't a girl and a boy together.

Leah:
[answering: Does God answer your prayers?] I think angels are thoughts of God, like God's thoughts drifting to you. Like you now, they're really God's thoughts, yeah. And it's like they express his thoughts, 'cause he can't really, so they are his thoughts and they express 'em to people.

Dominique:
He doesn't really like talk to you back, only if you're in great big trouble. If you're like far from the shore and you'll hear something up from heaven if you're really quiet, um he'll say, if you're going to far, he'll say [whisper] "pedal backwards".

Leah:
It feels like kind of someone's hugging me kind of, in my thoughts, and it feels like I don't have to have that anger inside. Like if someone's, or like if something's happened that's just gotten me angry or something. I can kind of just go, like calm down and stuff. Like that.

boy:
You wouldn't be alive if you didn't have a spirit.

Herself - Author:
Children experience a lot of little deaths: the loss of a pet, a divorce, a teacher leaves that they love, a friend moves away, a friend no longer wants to be their friend - these are deaths, these are forms of death, they're loss. They are some threshold we come to where we can't get what we want, and the other side of the threshold is mysterious and unknown to us. And I think if we can teach our children to approach change and loss with consciousness, with awake-fullness, not a "oh it'll get better", "oh don't be so sad", or "you're make a mountain out of a mole hill", no, to really respect children's feelings about loss.

Leah:
[answering: What is religion?] It's like a tree and roots, and your religion is like the roots of the tree. Like the branches can grow off and that's like your life.

Helen:
[demonstrating prayer] Thank you for creating me. And thank you for creating the earth, cause space doesn't have enough oxygen for us to live. So he created a planet where we can live on.

[last lines]

Christie:
If I were you, I would get down on my knees and go like this and then start praying, hold your head down and start praying to God about good things.