Cathedral

My eight-year-old built this. (Actually, this is the second time he built this, or something like it — the first time, it was accidentally destroyed by a clumsy friend before I had the chance to take a picture of it.) He proudly announced to me that this was a cathedral, but that it was not like any other cathedral, and that all the people who don't believe in God come to it. (He went on to describe that the roof opens up for weapons to be pointed at the sky, presumably in the direction of God).

We had been watching "Building The Great Cathedrals" on NOVA not long before this. It's obviously sparked his imagination. He has the general sense of a cathedral as a church, as a place of worship — but I'm still not sure what inspired him to create one for such contrary reasons. I was puzzling over this with a friend, not too long ago, and she gave me a sort of you're-missing-the-obvious look — that had to have come from his parents, of course. But I'm really not so sure.

I tend to keep my opinions on religion mostly to myself, particularly around my son, because I'd like to think of that as a decision he ought to be allowed to come to on his own (and I think eight years old might be too soon to arrive at it). That said, though, as a family, we're not antagonistic to religion, but it's obvious we don't embrace it. The most practical contact he's had with religion has been to admire an old stone church from the outside.

I very gently tried to get him to elaborate a bit on why someone would want to build a cathedral for this purpose, but his interest in the conversation trailed off, and he began to describe a symbol he had built, trying to make the complicated shape with his fingers.

I try to encourage him to understand that not everyone will think or do or believe what he does, and that a certain amount of understanding of those differences (and either tolerating them, or failing that, just keeping quiet) goes a long, long way.

Maybe that's just the nature of eight years old — to be contrary.