This road-trip-inspired post, which is partly a meditation on religious instruction, was originally published in a somewhat different form on the Los Angeles Moms Blog. I don’t have an official “Hump Day Hmm” going up for this week, so I thought this post could fill in for that.
Bright and early on a Saturday morning in mid-June, the day after the school year ended, the five of us climbed into Mom-in-law’s SUV and headed off on a ten-day road trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. We’d been planning this for a year – no “staycation” for us this year, no matter how high the price of gas was heading!
We spent all of our second day on the road driving through Utah, which was new territory to all of us. There’s a lot of nice ranch land in central Utah, but not much else. Sunday is a quiet travel day, and many businesses are closed. This was particularly surprising to the kids, who are used to the 24/7 culture of Southern California, and were just stunned by the empty parking lots and the fact that we could not find a Subway that was open.
It’s not just a matter of “Sunday’s just a regular day” with my stepchildren, though. They’ve been raised with no religious training at all, or even much exposure to anything church-related, having two agnostic parents. Their instruction in values and “right-living” isn’t being neglected, but it just doesn’t tie in with a religious tradition. While I’ve fallen away from church attendance myself during the last several years, I was raised in the Catholic Church, and continued to observe its rituals through most of my adulthood, even if I didn’t buy into many of its official policies and practices any more. That background was an important part of my son’s upbringing as well, although he’s not a regular churchgoer these days either; I’m supportive of the idea of letting kids make their own decisions about their religious beliefs and practices once they’re older, but I really am not sure how they’re equipped to do that without exposure to some set of beliefs.
Neither my husband nor his ex-wife objects to the idea of my talking about formal religion in general terms with my stepkids, but I honestly don’t know how to approach it. There’s no context or base for me to start from, and I’m not sure they even have all that much curiosity about the subject. Christmas and Easter are completely secular holidays for them, and since I’ve known them, they’ve only been in churches for the occasional wedding or memorial service. (They could have attended their step-cousin’s First Communion Mass this past spring, but it was on a weekend when they were with their mom, and their dad and I decided not to ask for a custody-schedule waiver that would have allowed them to come. That might have offered some good “teachable moments,” if we’d taken the opportunity.) Their public-school curriculum has lightly touched on religious movements and institutions from historical perspectives, including the obligatory fourth-grade “California missions project,” which my third-grade stepson hasn’t gotten to yet.
I really had no idea how to convey to my stepchildren that Utah was founded by followers of a particular religion, many of its residents today are still observant members of that church, and that part of that observance means not conducting business on Sunday, because it’s set aside for rest and reflection. I wasn’t sure how to connect religious practice with the empty parking lots and closed Subway restaurants, and have that mean anything to them. And I’m sorry to say I didn’t try very hard; they just think Utah is a strange place where almost everything is closed on Sunday. Not really everything, of course; we did find open gas stations, a Chili’s for a late lunch, a state park to visit (Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake), and our hotel in Logan, Utah. (If we would have needed them, I’m sure the police stations, firehouses, and hospitals would have been open too – some places just can’t close, no matter what.) That evening in Logan, my husband and I took a walk for a few blocks down Main Street, and felt like we had traveled back to 1957. It wasn’t just because of the old buildings, but because the streets were so quiet and no businesses were open.
Even for secular folks, I think the idea of Sunday as a noncommercial day of rest has a lot to recommend it, but I think it’s hard to act on that when you live in a 24/7 world. I know we don’t act on it at home, unless it’s a rare Sunday when we don’t happen to have any plans that involve leaving the house.
And when we stopped at a Subway for lunch on Monday, the kids felt like their world was back to normal.
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On a lighter, but somewhat related, note, maybe we should consider giving the kids a simple Blogthings quiz about their broad spiritual beliefs, and start from that. According to this one, there may be a good reason I’ve lapsed in my Catholicism – apparently, I should be Jewish. An interesting twist, given that my dad was raised Jewish, and converted to Catholicism when he was 21.
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On a lighter, but somewhat related, note, maybe we should consider giving the kids a simple Blogthings quiz about their broad spiritual beliefs, and start from that. According to this one, there may be a good reason I’ve lapsed in my Catholicism – apparently, I should be Jewish. An interesting twist, given that my dad was raised Jewish, and converted to Catholicism when he was 21.
| You Should Follow Judaism |
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Religious holidays and cultural identity are very important to you. |
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I found this post really, really interesting given that my 14 year old son and I had a lengthy discussion about theology last night; he has decided he wants to study theology in college because he finds it both “fascinating and disturbing,” yet of all the kids so far, he is the one who most DOESN’T believe in a living God. I really liked what you had to say about how the choice should be theirs but that in order to MAKE the choice, they have to have some exposure-so true!
Kori – I kind of get where your son is coming from, since I’m in a similar place myself these days: a “religious studies” perspective and not so much a “religious practice” one. Studying theology might change his belief – or it might not – but in any case, it will give him a lot to consider. It’s not as easy as some would like it to be.
But you’re a churchgoer yourself, right? So your kids are getting a base, even if they may go in a different direction eventually, and being able to discuss it with them objectively is really important, I think.
I don’t go to church much anymore either. I went to a Lutheran school through 8th grade and still went a lot during high school. It all unraveled when I went to college. Plus, I work a lot of Sundays.
My kids go to Lutheran school now, so I feel a little guilty. We’ll see how this all plays out.
Mike – I think it unravels for a lot of people during college, especially if they go away.
But if your kids are going to a Lutheran school, they are getting some exposure, at least. Hopefully that will give you a place to start talking about it with them.
Great post, Florinda. This isn’t something I have ever really had to think about, not being a parent, at least not on a practical level, but it has crossed my mind on occasion. I was raised in the United Methodist Church–my mom was religious as were her parents. My father was not so much. He was raised Catholic but converted to my mother’s faith after he married her. He has a deep seeded resentment towards the Catholic Church, which I have never been able to fully figure out. Maybe I’m not meant to. He really wasn’t a churchgoer at all when I was growing up and used to always tell my brother and I that the more educated we became, the less we would buy into religion and God. That proved true for him, I know.
My husband is an atheist in the sense that he does not believe in a higher power of any kind. He was raised Lutheran (I switched to the faith during my college years finding it more in tune with my own beliefs at that time than the Methodist church) and raised in a relatively religious home. Both of us went to church every Sunday as children.
Whereas my husband doesn’t believe in a god, I do. I just don’t subscribe anymore to organized religion of any sort. I find religion fascinating on many levels and think there is truth and value in many religious beliefs, but I think religion of any kind is too often manipulated and twisted for unbecoming reasons. I have lost faith in religion as a result, you could say.
Neither my husband nor I attend church today. Sundays really are just another day for us.
I thought it was interesting that my result for the quiz suggested I should be an atheist. 🙂
Literary Feline – Maybe your husband’s atheistic beliefs are influencing you more than you know :-).
You said: “I find religion fascinating on many levels and think there is truth and value in many religious beliefs, but I think religion of any kind is too often manipulated and twisted for unbecoming reasons.” I strongly agree, and that’s one big reason I’ve fallen away from religious practice, but I do like reading and learning about religion and spirituality.
Even so, I think as part of their general social/cultural education, my stepkids should have some exposure to theology. Tall Paul is OK with that, but I just wouldn’t know where to start.