Losing My Religion

The other day my daughter lost a little bit more of her innocence. Gone...poof...never to be recovered. That last few weeks Naomi, who is 6, has been talking about going to Disneyland. She loves the princesses...you know, Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel. All she has talked about is going to visit them...because, she informed us, they are real! They live at Disneyland...and she wanted to visit them in the worst way. But just the other day, a well intentioned friend (who undoubtedly received a tip from older siblings) told her they were not real. They are just people dressed up. Poof...gone. At the supper table the other night she informed us of the bad news.

Now I know some would say "good riddance"! Nothing but corporate indoctrination trying to get our kids to buy Disney crap...bad examples for young girls - teaching them to wait for some prince to come and rescue the helpless woman from her circumstances. Blah, blah, blah...I get it. I'm still sad - and I know my wife is too. For with one metaphorical wave of the magic wand, a little bit of wonder, just a little bit of her imagination was lost. And that is a sad, sad, thing. It happens too quickly they way it is. We send our kids off to school to learn...and what do we get? Drained imaginations. They learn about the "real world" - that we have everything figured out. From the color of the sky, to the make up of stars, to the fact that Snow White and Ariel aren't real. And what do we gain? A lack of wonder...a lack of awe...and a mechanically boring world. We get this in religion now too. Everything must be explainable...there can be no mystery, no unknown. The Bible must be explained. Worship must be practical and easy to follow. And we wonder 

why kids would rather read Harry Potter? We wonder why children are bored...and why they become bored adults.

This is why I love G.K. Chesterton. Yes...he is feisty. I know...he really doesn't like Calvinism. But he loves magic. He loves wonder...and believes that Christianity is the last great bastion of magic and awe. In Orthodoxy, Chesteron proudly tells us he is a product of his childhood, and the greatest teacher he every had were the fairy tales. Worlds where we didn't know what would happen next...where animals talked, and magic trees produced anything but leaves. This, argues Chesterton, is the world of the Bible. Magic trees, talking donkey's, magic clothes, and walking on water...And for Chesteron this is how we should see the world. A magical place where wonderful and mysterious things happen all the time. A world of kingdoms, and Spirits...a world of princes and princesses of a great King who has come and is coming. This is what I want for my children...and I will fight like mad to preserve it. Even if it means taking my daughter to Disneyland.