"Did God Die?"

I will be honest: I did not really think much at all about when the questions about religious beliefs would begin to come out of my son's mouth — I am not, after all, any good at forethought of any kind — but I am fairly certain that had I given this eventuality the planning it indubitably deserves, I would not have expected it to start at age three. But I should have, because that is when it has.

This morning, as Primus and I were eating our early breakfast, giving Mama and Baby a little extra sleepytime, he looks up at me and asks, very intensely, "Did God die?"

Not really expecting that one, I hemmed a bit, then said, "No, I don't think so."

"Jesus is dying on the cross in the office," was his reply, referring to the large crucifix in the other room, a gift from my parents and grandparents on the occasion of my confirmation and high school graduation.

Oh, that. "Well, yes, Jesus died for us, and Jesus is God. So, I suppose..." Seeming answered, he returned to his oatmeal.

So we (my wife and I) need to do some serious deciding about how exactly we want to approach our tentatively-shared faith with our ever-inquisitive offspring. Neither of us want to cram him full of glib rote catechetical formulae; we want to share from our hearts what the core beliefs of our faith mean to us as earnest believers. And to do that, I am going to have to snap out of my spiritual sloth and get my head around my personal faith, because it will prove singularly difficult to confidently share something with Primus that I am not consciously incorporating into my daily life.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

The other day I was flipping through a notebook from college, seeing how many pages I had used up taking notes (not very many). But then I got to reading what notes there were, and inspired by what I read (yeah, I know: by my own class notes) I pulled this book off the shelf and read it over again.

I have read all three of Krakauer's full length books, and this is, without qualification, my favourite. The journey of Chris McCandless fascinated me from the moment I read the book's cover, and he has never entirely left my thoughts since.

For those of you who have not read the book, you should. At the risk of courting a charge of pretension (not that it would be a first) I would say that Into the Wild is an important book. Certainly it was important for me when I first read it, and it held up very well through a second reading.

The book opens with the discovery of a young man's body by moose hunters in Alaska. Krakauer, initially commissioned by Outside magazine and then driven further by his own fascination with the story, traces the journey of this Chris McCandless from his privileged life in suburban Virginia to his lonely death in the Alaskan bush, with as much detail as he can discover of the in-between. It is not a journey you will easily forget.

In the years since I first read it, this book has continued to be active in my mind, and the questions it raised are still there as I search for the answers in my own soul.

The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilly

I truly sank in and savored this book. It explored the author's experience (and my pet interest) of practicing Buddhism as a way to practice Christianity in the barn, monastery or wherever you happen to be. It helped me to quiet my "what next?" brainstorming and listen. It was most satisfying to read of a spiritual journey where the author is not in the end docile. O'Reilly is as feisty and testy when she ends the book as when you meet her, and yet genuine spiritual growth is evident. Something in my questing soul was answered when I read this book.