A special place. Always a nice hike. The bald eagles appear to be nesting already. Coyote and turkey tracks are all around. You can even reconstruct events in the animals’ lives: I saw how two coyotes trotted alongside each other until they split up in the middle of an open fen.
While walking I thought about a little vignette I recorded from summer: I was at Nokomis on a Sunday morning and a kid (a little large for his stroller) said to his parents, "Ah, the sun feels so nice! I even don’t wanna go to church! I don’t wanna go to church!"
Good for you, kid! That’s where it all begins! Rejecting religious beliefs sometimes starts with love of sunshine, plants and animals.
My own awakening began when my innocent childlike mind compared, however unconsciously, the love of nature with the drab, rote rituals of church services and the absurd stories I heard in Sunday school. Frogs, stars, and birds were so much more compelling than fairy tales.
My parents were complicit when they let me read books of my choosing during the service. I almost always selected dinosaur books. And the dinosaurs on those pages appeared, even to a little kid, so much more real than the illustrations of Jesus’s magic tricks.
So, good luck to that little kid! Maybe if he is vocal and persistent enough, his family will stop going to church and develop a new Sunday morning ritual. Here are some ideas:
– a picnic
– a hike
– a day trip
– a visit to relatives
– a visit to a zoo or new museum
– a long walk
– a canoe or kayak trip
– a morning of reading and games by the fireplace
Anything but church !
pseudoisaac 