in thoughts...
Friday, May 21, 2004
Mister God, This is Anna.
bought a book when i went for lunch break at kk observation yesterday.
Mister God, This is Anna. By Fynn.
"Fynn found Anna wandering the streets of East London in the 1930s and, unable to discover where she lived, took her home to live with his mother.
Fynn would spend his evenings talking and playing with Anna; they chatted about life, particularly science and mathematics, and Anna would tell him about her conversations with 'Mister God', to whom she poured out all her thoughts and troubles. Anna's innocent but insightful world-view caused Fynn to reassess his own."
it says at the bottom that it's an all-time classic (well i've never heard of it, but then again that's me..) but i bought the book because of one passage i happened to see:
"Our local parson was taken aback when he asked her[Anna] about God. The conversation went as follows:
'Do you believe in God?'
'Yes.'
'Do you know what God is?'
'Yes.'
'What is God then?'
'He's God!'
'Do you go to church?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Because I know it all!'
'What do you know?'
'I know to love Mister God and to love people and cats and dogs and spiders and flowers and trees', and the catalogue went on, '-with all of me.'
...Anna had bypassed all the non-essentials and distilled centuries of learning into one sentence - 'And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don't forget to love yourself.'
The whole business of adults going to church filled Anna with suspicion. The idea of collective worship went against her sense of private conversations with Mister God. As for going to church to meet Mister God, that was preposterous. After all, if Mister God wasn't everywhere, he wasn't anywhere. For her, church-going and 'Mister God' talks had no necessary connection. For her the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message when you were very little. Once you had got it, you went out and did something about it. Keeping on going to church was because you hadn't got the message, or didn't understand it, or it was 'just for swank'."
***
Anna, by the way, is a six-year-old. So dun fault her if you dun agree with her. but the passage made me smile. such brilliance from a six-year-old (fictional? i dunno, and i dun really care).
why did i smile? connected with a few points just within this passage.
i think The Higher Being's rules are really really simple - it boils down to just some easy rules (which maybe for mere mortals like us are just not easy to adhere to, easy to understand does not = easy to do). Humans complicate every bloody thing they can get their hands on.
of cos her understanding of it all is really really simple. and that made me smile because of the genuinity of it all. you have to give it to kids to see things this way.
about going to church 'just for swank'. YEAH man. this one had me smiling. i was, for a long time, very upset with people who became christians because it was "cool". my gawd. *slaps hand to forehead and rolls eyes*
i saw this quote elsewhere. "I'm a corrupted idealist - they call me a cynic."
and i realized what my problem with religion is. because towards other stuff i'm already a cynic. but towards religion i'm still an idealist. that's why what i see disturbs me, and it pushes me further and further away.
Mister God, This is Joanna. Give me time to see past all this.
Mister God, This is Anna. By Fynn.
"Fynn found Anna wandering the streets of East London in the 1930s and, unable to discover where she lived, took her home to live with his mother.
Fynn would spend his evenings talking and playing with Anna; they chatted about life, particularly science and mathematics, and Anna would tell him about her conversations with 'Mister God', to whom she poured out all her thoughts and troubles. Anna's innocent but insightful world-view caused Fynn to reassess his own."
it says at the bottom that it's an all-time classic (well i've never heard of it, but then again that's me..) but i bought the book because of one passage i happened to see:
"Our local parson was taken aback when he asked her[Anna] about God. The conversation went as follows:
'Do you believe in God?'
'Yes.'
'Do you know what God is?'
'Yes.'
'What is God then?'
'He's God!'
'Do you go to church?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Because I know it all!'
'What do you know?'
'I know to love Mister God and to love people and cats and dogs and spiders and flowers and trees', and the catalogue went on, '-with all of me.'
...Anna had bypassed all the non-essentials and distilled centuries of learning into one sentence - 'And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don't forget to love yourself.'
The whole business of adults going to church filled Anna with suspicion. The idea of collective worship went against her sense of private conversations with Mister God. As for going to church to meet Mister God, that was preposterous. After all, if Mister God wasn't everywhere, he wasn't anywhere. For her, church-going and 'Mister God' talks had no necessary connection. For her the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message when you were very little. Once you had got it, you went out and did something about it. Keeping on going to church was because you hadn't got the message, or didn't understand it, or it was 'just for swank'."
***
Anna, by the way, is a six-year-old. So dun fault her if you dun agree with her. but the passage made me smile. such brilliance from a six-year-old (fictional? i dunno, and i dun really care).
why did i smile? connected with a few points just within this passage.
i think The Higher Being's rules are really really simple - it boils down to just some easy rules (which maybe for mere mortals like us are just not easy to adhere to, easy to understand does not = easy to do). Humans complicate every bloody thing they can get their hands on.
of cos her understanding of it all is really really simple. and that made me smile because of the genuinity of it all. you have to give it to kids to see things this way.
about going to church 'just for swank'. YEAH man. this one had me smiling. i was, for a long time, very upset with people who became christians because it was "cool". my gawd. *slaps hand to forehead and rolls eyes*
i saw this quote elsewhere. "I'm a corrupted idealist - they call me a cynic."
and i realized what my problem with religion is. because towards other stuff i'm already a cynic. but towards religion i'm still an idealist. that's why what i see disturbs me, and it pushes me further and further away.
Mister God, This is Joanna. Give me time to see past all this.
posted by Sodium-squared at 5/21/2004 09:59:00 PM
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