Quicksilver

Room with a View... or Several...

Recently I was in an interesting conversation with my Southern Baptist mother, non-church-attending-but-protestant sister and her daughter who is also neither here nor there but has been in Sunday School enough to know the basics.

My niece mentioned that one of her girfriends suggested a slumber party game - 'Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board'. I'm sure they saw it in a movie (The Craft?), however, my niece says that the girl claims to be a little witch and that her parents are Wiccan.

Well, the niece found this game suggestion uncomfortable. Actually, she was afraid of it. Her internal alarms went off. She has taken up the stereotypes too, at age 11. I spent the next hour GENTLY explaining to all three of these women that most Wiccans and Pagans merely see God in a different way, in a more nature-based, earth-based, even Native American sort of way, etc.

I tried to relate it to the same appreciation I have for sunshine on my face or wind in my hair. I may see that as a smile or brush from God or from the Universe or... from Father Sun and Sister Wind. What I name it neither changes it nor diminishes my respectful, worshipful appreciation of it.

I was not trying to convert them to or from anything, but merely show them that there is more than one way to look at the same thing. Tolerance, tolerance, tolerance. This is how we have to proceed to get us all moving in the same general direction of... (Wait for it.) ...Love & Light. We're wasting experience and energy by aggravating each other over the little stuff.

I reassured them that there was no danger and nothing to fear in the game, whether it worked or not, HOWEVER my niece was perfectly within her rights to decline playing this game, any game, which she doesn't like or wouldn't feel comfortable with. That could include soccer, spin-the-bottle, or backgammon, as well as 'Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board'. No need to judge the rightness or wrongness of the person or the game. She can simply choose not to play if that choice feels right to her (the niece).

I also made sure she realized that an invitation to the Wiccan girl for a weekend retreat at church would likely be declined, not because Wiccans are evil godless people, but because their beliefs are different. Just as neither of them would appreciate a bat mitzphah (or even know what it is).

Room... Gotta leave a lotta room AND allow that different people will always have different views.

05.16.2001

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