Priestess, Age Six

On my table, there is a picture drawn on that soft, lined paper teachers use to help children form their letters properly. The drawing is of a lopsided heart, divided into a dozen different spaces.

“Tell me about this picture, Eden.” I ask my six year old daughter, holding her artwork in my hands. “This is what is in my heart, Mommy.” She replies, eager to point out its features. There’s Eden, on top of the heart marrying her preschool friend, Justice. Inside the heart are Grandma and Grandpa, peeking out from two of the windows. My husband Paul and I are there in the bottom left hand corner of the drawing, and her younger sister Cate resides nearby. Most of the compartments are empty, filled only with more hearts of all shapes and sizes. “These are rooms Mommy, for all the love that people can live in.” Lately, Eden seems to have a direct line to God. She has waking dreams of Jesus ruling from a safe and generous castle. She composes detailed songs of praise while sailing up and down on the backyard swing. She erects altars on the sidewalk, and shrines in the garden. She greets every morning by climbing in bed with me for centering prayer, where we hold hands and close our eyes and “Ask Jesus to show us what he is doing today.”

What from my own childhood has prepared me for my young one’s intimate relationship with God? I scan my own memories to see what tools my history holds: rigid prayers beginning with “Now I lay me down to sleep…;” color coded passages in my hardback Bible; memorized creeds from catechisms class. None of these compare to the kind of conversations my little mystic is having with her maker. I struggle to keep up. I am eager to learn. This child is my priestess, showing me new ways to relate to God.

After drawing the heart God built, Eden proceeded to tell me what the Holy Spirit looks like. (“She has beautiful long golden curly hair that goes all the way down to her feet. She wears long white robes that swish around, and she is very tall and she has beautiful purple eyes.”) A few days later she came downstairs and said, “Mommy, I did centering prayer in my bedroom today and I saw Jesus holding a big ball, a sphere, you know Mommy like a big blue ball full of water…. you know, water? And Jesus threw the ball on the devil and drowned the devil!!! But everyone else, like you and me and people, we just got splashed with the water and it was fun so we laughed.”

I ask myself, how many perfect pictures of love does she have to paint before I set aside my laundry list of prayer requests and my theological text books in order to try, at least for awhile, to simply wait and see what God has to show me? So, I resolve to practice my faith Eden’s way—with centering prayer, altar construction, and the singing of songs in the breeze. For where else does this stuff come from, but from God? And who else can teach me but this child?

It is my dearest hope my children never lose this wild, instinctive connection to God. I pray with all the earnestness of my heart that I can find a way to give them their family stories, without indoctrinating their souls. I hope I can support them as they become People of the Book, passing on a narrative of love rather than a book of rules. Moreover, I pray, and hope, and wish that my own hubris and adult pride will not prevent me from sitting at their feet, learning tremendous truths from tiny mouths. I hope I will continue to let them show me how to uncover God.

May there be many rooms of love in my heart. May Eden help me build them. Amen.