Soul of the Child Nurturing the Divine Identity of Our Children

Introduction The greatest tragedy in human life is to live unaware of one's divine identity.-- Reverend William Harper Houff Blair is a small town about an hour from Omaha, set into the green fields, low hills, and open plains of eastern Nebraska. Most of the people who live in Blair also work there, as farmers, schoolteachers, or shopkeepers. A few commute to a larger city or neighboring town for employment or travel to visit family.My children's great-grandmother, Laura, a woman of ninety-five, lives in Blair at a nursing home. She has accomplished much in her long life, including raising three children with her husband and then without him, helping to run a chicken farm, and teaching elementary school. She is my children's oldest living relative.She is also very frail, thinks of herself not only as living but also as dying. "It is time for my soul to leave my body," she said once. Neither her vision nor her balance is good. She can no longer live independently and now exists in that time of life between life and death, and has the wisdom to know it.Once while visiting her, my daughters and I took a walk on the parklike grounds of the nursing home, which sat near the edge of town. We had just come downstairs -- the children and I needed a little time walking outdoors after spending an hour in Laura's small room. The three of us were saddened, as we walked, by how quickly Great-grandma's soul did seem to be leaving her body -- almost like air gradually leaking out of a balloon. Her body's skin was shriveling and pale, her presence in the teaming, vital world contracting before our eyes -- and yet we also simultaneously experienced a different emotion that was difficult to describe, almost a mysterious sense of anticipation. We knew something incredible awaited Great-grandma, though we didn't know what it was.Davita, who was eight, asked me, "Where will Great-grandma's body go when she dies?""Probably into the ground," I replied."What about her soul?"Though tempted, as most parents are, to say "heaven" when a small child inquires about death, I said instead, "We don't know for sure. We could say she's going to heaven. We could say she's returning to nature itself, to the trees and the wheat fields out there." I pointed to the green plain at the horizon that surrounds Blair, Nebraska."Her soul will be out there, all around?" Davita asked."Maybe." I smiled. "We don't exactly know what happens to the soul after death."Gabrielle, almost twelve, had been chewing on the moist end of a long blade of grass. Now she entered the conversation."Dad," she said, "what is the soul made of?" She had been to Christian and Jewish Sunday schools over the years. My wife, Gail, is of Nebraskan Protestant stock; I am of New York Jewish origin; our daughters have thus heard both Christian and Jewish answers to questions about the soul. Because we have lived overseas and are interested in world religions, they've heard Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and other responses as well. Yet I don't think she had ever heard an answer to this specific question. It was a somewhat unusual one: whatmaterialis the human soul composed of?My instantaneous answer was to stall. "What do you mean?" I asked.She thought for a moment. "What's a soul made of?" She did her best to ask again a question that I had no answer to at that moment.I responded honestly, "I don't really know. I'm not sure anybody does.""Well, but I know," she said.I raised my eyebrows, amused. "Really?""Yes. It's made of God.""The soul is made of God," I repeated back to her. "Okay. And what is God made of?"She frowned. Behind her eyes her mind whirred, trying to figure out the logical quandary she'd walked right into."I guess I can't say 'God is made of the soul,' can I?" she thought aloud, applying simple logic."You could actually," I said, "Gurian, Michael is the author of 'Soul of the Child Nurturing the Divine Identity of Our Children' with ISBN 9780743417044 and ISBN 0743417046.