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Well, at least setting me up for one of the things that I found to be true is that

my voice as a parent far overrides any voice they're going to hear from church.

And not only your voice, but your example and how you live and the things you expose them to

and the way you talk to them, all of those things influence your children.

We're with them all of the time. They can sense whether you're being real or faking it.

And I'm right with John on teaching them court values and focusing on the positive,

giving them, if they can pick any view of God, let's give them some good choices

of how they can view God.

I've taught my children about mother and heaven.

I figure if we're going to use myth and metaphor, let's use myth and metaphor.

We go with mother and heaven and I've recently just fallen in love with the stories of the Hindu gods.

And I teach them about them, I teach them that we rub Ganesh's head on the way out the door

just to remember that obstacles can move out of our way.

And those stories are so wild and crazy that there's no way they're going to take those literally

even as a five-year-old.

And so, you know, my five-year-old will say her prayers at night and I'll say,

who do you want to pray to?

And when she's really scared, she'll pray to mother and heaven, she gets very comforted by that.

And now it's for her.

And someday she likes to pray to Buddha.

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