Homeschooling religion

I know I've mentioned this before, but the parish I attend doesn't have much for kids in terms of regular weekly education.  Ours is a graying population, and almost all of the families with children have kids under 5, so a comprehensive CCD program wouldn't really make sense anyway.  But it would be nice if there was a Sunday School program or a library or a point person to go to for help on how to teach your kids religion.  According to last Sunday's bulletin, we are now getting a director of religious education.  It will be interesting to see what that means in real-life help.

In any case, it's become apparent that most of the other parents aren't as anxious about this lack as I am.  If I had sensed a common interest, I would have gone ahead and tried to put together a Sunday program, but it doesn't seem to be there and I don't want to be the one and only person doing the work.  So I've decided to homeschool religion with Max.  We have done some educational stuff before this, stopping and starting, but now that he's in preschool, I feel he needs a little more of an organized effort. I'm really going to try and make Friday our day for a composed lesson.  Last week was our first week, and we re-read Jane Ray's Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden .  This week we did Noah's Ark.  I chose two books from the library - Noah's Trees by Bijou Le Tord and On Noah's Ark by Jan Brett.   The Brett book is far more visually interesting - the background of each page is drawn papyrus with cut outs in animal shapes giving more illustrated detail.  The story is told from the viewpoint of Noah's grandchild, a gender ambiguous child who closely communes with the animals.  Noah is in only a small percentage of the pictures.  Noah's Trees is less pretty, the illustrations are far more primitive and the text is very simple.  But the two together manage to tell most of the story from beginning to end.   We also checked out a video, part of Beginner's Bible series, which Max really enjoyed.  I thought it was okay.  The animation was primitive, but again the story was there, and he got excited about watching it which is something.  

We also started doing Saint of the Week.  I put up a little shelf under our Madonna & Child icon and then bought a bunch of saint religious cards and had them laminated at Office Max.  On the shelf I put the week's card and a candle.  Max and I talk about this week's saint, light the candle, and sing "Happy Saint's Day to You."  Last week we did St. Catherine of Genoa.  I had a hard time translating her life to Max or even really connecting with her biography personally.  I never really "get" people who experience religious euphoria or commune with God so directly.  I've never had that myself.  Mostly I just muddle through and try to keep the faith.  I'd like to find a saint who kept going to mass even though her child irritated her with his behavior throughout every mass on each and every Sunday.  There's someone I could identify with.

This week's saint was St. Matthew, tax collector, publican, convert, apostle, and gospel writer.  I'd never really considered how far he came until I thought about what a tax collector really was: a collaborator with the enemy.  A person who cheated his own people to get ahead with the occupying Romans.  Basically, a scum bag.  An interesting apostle choice on Jesus's part.  And it sort of amazing how he turned around and became wholly different.  People so rarely do that.

Rachel's thoughts on this scripture: 

On the surface, this is a great kids' story.  It's got a boat, a cool set of animals (and a boy and girl of each).   There's a sense of danger and a sense of safety with God filling the protector role for Noah and his family.  

But ultimately, looking at this story from an adult's perspective, it's a fairly horrifying one.  God is destroying the world.  On purpose.  As punishment.   In a fairly drawn out manner.  By drowning.  The scripture says that the world was wicked, but it's hard to imagine that Noah is the only good one out there.  What about all the children who must have been in existence?  The babies, the toddlers, the impressionable youth.  And why did the animals have to die?  Surely a virulent human plague would have been a quicker and more efficient way for God to have accomplished this goal.  

Is this just another story that attempts to explain suffering by blaming the victim?  There is geological evidence that a disastrous flood did occur in the Middle East and other Noah-type stories exist, so the event likely did happen.  But the why?  I have just as hard time chalking it up to widespread, comprehensive human evil as I do ascribing Hurricane Katrina as God's justice for America's "sins of abortion and homosexuality" as certain religious demagogues would have it. 

Noah's God is a lot more decisive than, say, Yahweh of the kings of Israelite and Judah.  Those kings got a lot more chances to reform than Noah's contemporaries.  If you read through the book of Kings, God is constantly relating the message that unless Israel shapes up and stops worshipping idols, it will be wiped out.  But it takes the Babylonians quite a while to actually show.  So did God evolve?  Did he become more patient?  Did the Noah experience cause God to learn and grow?  Or did he just become jaded and cynical like the housewife who figures why clean because it will just get dirty again? 

Also, the idea of Noah's Ark doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense.  Without an experienced zookeeper and an unending supply of food/medicine/hay, this boat would quickly have become a floating massacre as carnivore ate herbivore.  Can you imagine the stench of bodies and fecal matter?   Yuck. 

Really, it's better if you don't go beneath the surface of this one. 

tags: noahs ark  religion  bible