For Whom the Bell Tolls

X-man and I read a bunch of books about death last night.

For those of you who are interested here are the titles:

"When Someone Dies" by Sharon Greenlee
"The Empty Place" by Roberta Temes
"The Fall of Freddie the Leaf" by Leo Buscaglia

He sat through all of them very patiently. He asked questions. We talked about death. We talked about sadness. He hypothesized about who the people in some of the pictures might have lost. He actually understood the metaphor about Freddie the Leaf symbolizing people.

Then I pulled out the "What is God?" book by Etan Boritzer that I got at the library. It works at the question about what god is when god means very different things to very different people. It talks about the various religions. As soon as I started to read the title X-man stopped me.

"You don't believe in god."

"No, I don't."

"Daddy doesn't believe in god."

"No, he doesn't."

"Then I don't want to believe in god."

Oooh, hyper-liberal parent backfire.

"But I want you to learn about the different kinds of choices you have so you can make them and learn about them as you grow up."

"Well, I don't want to learn about god. Read me the story about vacation instead."

"Okay, then."

And back to the library the book on god goes. We'll try again when he has less of a parent "god" complex. Maybe when he thinks we suck a bit more, he'll be more open to it. Which is good, because it wasn't exactly the book I wanted, because in the end, it assumes there is a god. Which means it represents all the basic religions except my lack of religion. But I figure I have that one covered in spades... What I need is something that deals with spirituality. Because it's entirely possible to be spiritual and not believe in god.