A Painting in the Sky

Today's sunrise was beautiful.

So beautiful, it prompted a very poignant question by Ryan. "Who made the sky so pretty?"

I thought of taking the "easy road" and answering simply with "God." But there are a couple problems with this. First, I'm personally not sure where I stand on that theory. Second, while it's an "easy answer" it would clearly open up a whole carton of new questions from Ryan that I'm not prepared to answer yet.

Religion is a tricky subject. I've waned in and out of varying degrees of religious faith over the years. So while I believe there is a higher power and I believe that higher power has an impact on how our lives are intertwined, I certainly don't take the bible as a true account of how we came to be.

But that doesn't mean we, as a family, disregard Jesus and God and the stories we learned in bible school. I think many of those stories provide the basis for healthy discussion and are lessons on how to love others and be loved. We have received books from friends that speak about God and read those to the kids. Lindsey even sleeps with the fuzzy bible board book she received as a gift from her baptism (yep...both kids were baptised too).

Some may take my stance and actions as hypocritical or inconsistent. That's OK. They are. As I stated before, I'm still not sold on where I stand on that theory. To me, the important thing is to keep options open. To explore religion and faith and spirituality in a healthy way in order to find inner peace and be comfortable with ones place in the world. I want my kids to go to church, if they want to go. I want them to read the bible when they're old enough to understand what it is (or what it's meant to be). But I also want them to consider other religions, other beliefs. To be informed and make a decision that works for them.

So today we left God out of the equation. I posed the question back to Ryan. "Who do you think made the sky so pretty?" And his reply was as good as any other.

"There are guys who get ladders and take paintbrushes and go up the ladders and dip the paint brush into the buckets and color in the clouds."

"Those must be some tall ladders to make it all the way up to the clouds," I said.

"Yep. And they're really big brushes too."