Religion and (my) Children

Over an year ago, a very good friend and i talked about having kids and the what to do when it comes to religion. Today, going back to our conversation, i found this mail that i wrote in response.

Teaching about God and teaching religion are two different things. Religions have rituals, and special formations that define them as such. I will  strive to teach my kids about as many religions as possible rather than stick just to the dominant religion in my / their fathers' culture. All of these beliefs should be explained side-by-side, even including the beliefs from ancient religions now usually treated as mythology. If i favor , lets say Christianity, by taking them to church and such,then they become biased.

Bringing up kids ignorant to religion makes them easy pawns for doomsday evangelists and other weirdos. I would not encourage fundamentalism and dogmatism. I see a study of religions, from the beginning of each, how it came to be, who is Buddha, Mohamed, Hare Krisha, the seven faces of Lord Vishnu, Jesus and who these people are to their respective religions, what their significance is. We would discuss The Order, Jihads, Reincarnation, Papacy, Pilgrimism , the crusaders.

What many religions try to  do is to get people who practice some other religion, to quit and join their religion. This is called "converting" someone to your religion. When you think about what these religious people believe -- for example, Christians, who believe that if you don't believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell forever after you die -- you can understand why trying to "convert" others to Christianity seems like the right thing to do, to them: they feel that, if they do not get you to convert, you are going to be sorry after you die, so they feel it's for your own good that you should become a Christian too. The problem is that some people get so excited about converting others, that they end up doing things that are unfair, like making people believe that if someone is a Pagan who worships older gods, they are really a Devil worshipper, and evil (when really, the Wiccan religion, being an Earth-loving religion, is actually quite a gentle belief system).

I like Buddhism - Buddhism is the only one I know of that will actually let you practice whatever religion you are now, and Buddhism, at the same time. This is because the Buddha taught that his followers should not just accept what others say and believe, letting everything rest on "faith" -- but they should study and consider and try things, and when they find what they believe to be true and right and they can see from watching those who are wise that it is true, and right, then they should follow that path.

I want to encourage critical thinking. which does not only apply to religion, but to life in general. I used to have a problem with the fact that my boyfriend (now ex) is an atheist. Until i got it that atheists don't attempt to base their values and principles on the commands of any gods — nor is such a foundation necessary. Atheists may rely upon any number of different foundations for morality, but a common one will be empathy for other human beings - which is shared across all religions.

Empathy for other human beings is hugely superior to basing morality on the alleged commands of an alleged deity/ religion because if a child merely learns to obey orders, then he /she won't learn enough about how to reason out moral dilemmas in new situations — a vital skill given how technologies such as the biological sciences and discoveries  keep advancing and creating new explorable  possibilities for us. Empathy, never ceases to be dominant and is always crucial when it comes to evaluating new dilemmas.

Religion is not necessary for explaining who we are and why we are here. I think kids are indoctrinated with religious dogmas that are contrary to reality. Why do i need to instill fear? I need to instill free thought and a thinking mind that evaluates, other than one that is frightened and coerced into beliefs. Simply because fear is what makes people do things, i don't necessarily think it's the right way around things. Let me digress a bit... Fear is what makes you not do the things you want to do in life. It's what holds you back. What forms our religious backgrounds constitutes into the people we become as adults. The fear of tribulation goes beyond hell fire and brimstones, it boils down to fear of experimentation and breaking through barriers to see what lies beyond what you know, what society has.

I will encourage my kids to go to church, synagogue, mosque, temple...all of them. I will let them see how other worship, the rituals..., why they believe what they believe, it's not about having a Sunday tradition for me to be carried on like a family name.. You taking them to church, as i said earlier, does not indicate a willingness to let them choose. It's setting them free,  but having a long invisible rope around their legs. They can only get so far, before the going to church biases them into Christianity.

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Adopt-a-Black-Baby.com

We live in a quiet, if you like, leafy suburb, with everything within a 10 -15 minutes walking distance. Serious, we walk our lovely spitz-terrier to the vet, wakj to the gymn, walk to the shopping mall, cinema, bookstore, grocery and if we ever get kids while still here, they will literally walk to school.

We are also suspect that we are dangerously close to some adoption agency. More than 30% of the apartments have a white couple with a little pram that houses a black baby. They like to walk them to the above mentioned facilities and speak to them in Dutch. At first, it was a joke between Nate and I as to where they get the babies. I suggested that maybe there is a Babies R US but i later found out that that shop deals with Baby Stuff not babies themselves. Then we thouhgt that maybe they get the babies from some website called something in the line of adopt-a-black-baby.com. I Googled that, just for kicks, and for sure, it exists! I found adopt-a-black-baby.com.

Their motto is, We are better than Oxfam!


They also realise the importance of marketing. And what best way to do that than to post this:

All I need to do is find out the physical location. As i said, it can't be too far from us!

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For the second time..

...I am a godmother. Yes, there are people out there who would not only let me within touching distance to their children, they put their children's life in the line of fire by making me a guardian - just in case they (parents) do what I'll tell you in a few minutes. The world has become such a bad place, I'm now being considered a good influence to babies. The reward? I get to spoil other people's children while pretending that they're mine, and get give them back when they start competing with wolves at night. During the day, new baby Ry looks like this (actual picture of Ry - pretending to be - asleep)>>>






And during the night, he sounds something like this...


...without the musical notes and not nearly as delightful as the moon, notwithstanding the fact the Baby Ry was less than 36 hours when he making that (utterly awful) sound. I just had a thought. To punish Simon Cowell, (for reasons unbeknown to me. It just sounds nice - punish and Simon Cowell in the same sentence), some idle producer with money to waste (also called Ryan Seacrest) should produce a reality show called ' Baby's Got Talent', and have Simon judge it. And to make it even better, he should judge it all by himself.

Babies do not understand any Earth language and any Cowellism would be wasted on them. It's come to my absent attention that he already has strategies to insult them more than he does with adults, and instead of saying thing like -

"I applaud you that you didn't do a ballad, which I would have expected. However, it was a little bit like a Chihuahua trying to be a tiger, insomuch as it's not really you."

His producers (a.k.a Ryan Seacrest)has consulted with professional advisors (read Janice Dickinson and Denise Richards) as to how best to approach the language barrier. Those combined great minds have come up with this -

How so ever creative. He has taken an incredibly, utterly forgettable sign and made it his own. Round one goes to Cowell. I would watch that show. It would replace this guy as my favourite man of all time,

who apparently has this huge airstrip on top of his head.

Gimme a minute to collect my composure... wooooosa.....wooooosa, there, where was I?

Oh, babies and godmothers...

Also, i get to bring them up if their parents decide that they've had enough and go jump from the Hollywood sign. Yes, when i have such thoughts about my friends, I make them as glamorous as possible. Helps kill the guilt. This is specially made even more dramatic, considering how hard it is to get a US visa if you are Kenyan - or any other country that sounds like it could be close to Africa, like Mongolia. Not to make fun of the conditions, but i did, at one time, think that Mongoloids are people from Mongolia. Wonder if they have a US embassy in Mongolia? Mmh, gotta check. Even when you are going to see family, you have to prove that your parents who are in the US of A can also support you, and if they are citizens by virtue of Green card, forget it about that visa. If being a citizen on Green card is that bad, why give them out in the first place? I don't have much love for the US, largely to do with their foreign policies, supported by the most ignorant people this earth has the unfortunate task of housing.

Of course there's those few that are ashamed to be called Uncle Sam's products, and have stepped out of their fucking ignorance and come down their stupid plastic high horses... and those are mighty jolly good fellows to be with and around. I have never gotten over a fellow blogger chatting me on yahoo meesager and expressing his astonishment at the fact that i know how to use a computer.. and that we actually do have computers here.

This post was meant to be a tribute to baby Ry...

More on Simon Cowell / Denise Richards / Seacrest's new show here

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The Birth II

I get to the hospital after 2 hours of traffic and my friend wants to kill me. She is pacing up and down, sitting, standing, bending, looking like she wants to jump out of her body. Earlier on, she had sent me a text message saying that she is tired, she wants to leave the labour at the hospital and go home.

I rub her lower back and she has never be so thankful in her life. Minutes later, another contraction hits, and the phone rings. It's her live-in boyfriend. He is stuck in traffic but on his way. I don't hear the rest as my pal is screaming at me now. I force her to breath with me and by the time the next contraction hits, the nurse takes over.

It's now 8.0pmn, and the doctor tells me unless i want to spend the night on the bench, she is not close to giving birth. The hospital they chose is miles away from the main road. by the time i go to pick her boyfriend (because the matatu has abandoned him in the middle of nowhere), it is close to 9pm. I come back with him to the hospital, he has a very unsuccessful conversation with his girlfriend, then we leave.

On the way, we discuss baby names. I've know for nine months now that they want to name their son after a Manchester United Player. I have been insisting it's a girl and unless they call her 'Nani' - which by the way means 'who' in Swahili, they will have a hard time naming her. They are convinced it's a boy. An hour later, she calls me. She gave birth to a bouncing baby girl!!

'She is just staring at me', My pal tells me.

I'm yet to go see her and possibly come up with baby names. I love Man U, but i don't think I'm having my godchild named after some guy.


Which reminds me of a story i saw today on CNN. An expectant woman goes to the loo in a train in India. She gives birth - accidentally, i presume- and the baby falls on to the tracks. The mother fell unconscious, and two hours and two stations later, the relatives knocked at the toilet door. She told them the story and they stopped the train. The baby girl was found, still alive.

Below is the mother and baby:


I find this very hard to believe. How did the baby become separated from the mother?

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