LESSONS OF ZENITH #001

My daughter is one of four most precious things in the world to me; my partner Julz, my other daughter Piper and my own life of course.  Zen (for short) is my youngest daughter, she is a product of Julz and my love.  Piper is my eldest daughter from my first (and possibly last) marriage.  Julz, as you can surmise, is my loving and supporting partner who puts up with my most negative personality traits.

I was inspired to write this column (I suppose it's a column as it's going to be an ongoing post in my blog) by Joe Swam in his blog HIT AND MISS, specifically his post WHEN NO MEANS KILL.  This got me thinking more about how we were going to raise our daughter.  Julz is an atheist also.  When I met her she was kind of on the fence due to her very religious background.  It didn't take long for her to get off the fence when I introduced her to critical thinking many years ago.  She is the only outed atheist in her family and although they love her dearly they can't understand her choice.

Probably one of the greatest influences of my life when it came to being even minded was my grandmother.

 When I was a Christian she was happy for me, when I became a Bahai she was happy for me and when I discovered Wicca, she was tolerant of me.  I didn't really find out until she passed away that her external acceptance was mirrored only by her internal struggle from societies understanding on what we should believe in.  So what has that got to do with my daughter?  Everything really.  It doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe,  it's what my daughter gets exposed to in life.  From the day she came home from the hospital her life has been an education and what goes into her head at this time is what makes the person she will be in the future.  The education she gets at home is the most important education she will get so it is up to Julz and I to give her the critical thinking skills that she needs to get by in this world.  It is not our place to instill in her what we believe but to teach her how to think about the information she has been presented with.

As an example, if I am a smoker I have to understand that she will learn from this and potentially become a smoker herself.  It is up to me to show her that I may do some things that are not good for me but before you decide to do what daddy does, please investigate before you make a decision.

Over the last 2 Christmases she has had no idea about what is going on, just wanting to open the next present so the whole idea about Santa hasn't even come into the equation but when it does I'm wondering what I will tell her.  When it happens, not if, I think I'm just going encourage her to ask questions and come to her own conclusions.  I'm sure a lot of you are thinking to yourselves that this is a horrible way to raise kids, why take away the magic of Christmas.  My answer is short and sweet; I'm not going to lie to her when it comes to Santa, the Easter Bunny the Tooth Fairy and God.  Instead I will allow her to examine the stories and encourage her to ask questions.  It's a nice theory, I wonder if I can follow through when the time comes or will I be too lazy to teach her?  No question, I'm not going to let my daughter grown up in ignorance.  

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff.  It takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right or click on the image of my book KING: A Supernatural Twist Of Fate to buy a copy so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin