Make Believe

I have to admit - my kids scare me.  I get very excited & think (like most parents I'm sure)  "my kids are brilliant."  B-roo doing sudoku's at 6.  Cabu at 4 trying to use a fishing pole to get toys that are stuck behind the toybox.  Ninjally starting to spout out phrases rather than a word here or there; an intepreter may still be needed but they're happening.  My kids are brilliant, and they scare me.

Probably the one who scares me the most is Cabu.
Last night driving home from soccer practice there was a lengthy explanation needed because I told a story.  I frequently tell random stories to my kids of Joey McGurk getting into oddball situations.  Cabu wanted to be put ontop of the van so he could see a bug.  (He's been placed up there periodically before, sshhh.)  I said "no not this time.  once when I was growing up Joey McGurk was up there and his shirt got stuck & he had to ride home on the roof."  (this is a typical Joey McGurk 2 sentence story).

Upon being quized if that was real, I had to confess - "No, I'm just telling a silly story.  Playing pretend."

B-roo had to chime in with - "make believe."

Cabu then dissected what it means to "make believe" and that is not really the same as "play pretend."  This is where I get scared.  That's deep.  Way deep. 
Okay taking "pretend" as the name of a game, (playing soccer) playing pretend simply means to take part in a game of imagination encounters - more or less.  Using sticks as guns is a form of playing "pretend".

He said about believing in God and how to make believe - he's not pretending.  There is a sense that if it's made it isn't belief, it is knowing;  if I know it's pretend - I'm not really going to believe it.  I was able to somewhat settle him with it being a silly story and God is real.  Belief is too serious, it is not made.

Knowing I was outmatched in this battle of wits I changed the subject.  Since his wits and his attention span are sharped than mine, the ploy worked.

Faith like a child.

"The two facts which attract almost every normal person to chidren are, first, that they are very serious, and, secondly, that they are in consequence very happy.  They are jolly with the completeness which is possible only in the absence of humour.  The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old.
It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense." - GK Chesterton