I thought this conversation between Dave and I was fitting on this Halloween.
Susan: How would you say is the best way to teach children about spirituality?
Dr. Hawkins: Well, I think teaching the value of love. I think the reverence in which we hold spiritual figures, Jesus Christ and the Saints and how all of society holds God. So I believe in teaching children from very early on about God and Jesus Christ and saints and good persons and the value of going to church and how we love the clergy, we love the priests and we love the nuns. We love them all those who help the church. The reverence in which society holds the spiritual domain. The reverence in which the integrous members of society hold it.
Other people, it’s their enemy. Holiness and spirituality and that which is Divinity is the enemy of people that are anti-God. There’s a lot of people that hate God and hate Divinity and hate spirituality and they exist in every religion. They hate Muslims, they hate Christians. So a good deal of hatred gets mixed into their religious sectarianism. So it’s very paradoxical, you know. Hate people who picture God in a different style than you than what you do so, you hate them. It’s tragicomic, tragic comical.
Susan: What is the spiritual significance of a couple choosing not to have children?
Dr. Hawkins: It’s not necessary. They might do it for spiritual reasons if they thought that having the children was going to interfere the spiritual design of their life. But that would be a selection that everybody makes, whether to get married or not in the first place and then whether to have children or not and the part that spirituality plays in that.
Nuns and priests don’t have children, you know. Well, priests do, in the Episcopal church, you know. Well, Catholic priests don’t. So in some churches you can’t have a family and other churches like Episcopal, you can have a family. So, it’s how it’s pictured. It can be pictured as a positive contributor to one’s spiritual dimension or could be pictured as retarding it. I think it’s how you hold it in your mind. I don’t think it is intrinsically is one way or the other.
I can just imagine Dr. Hawkin’s comments about the current degree of ideological imprisonment so many in this world are subject to. To hear both/and instead of either/or seems even more rare these days. How lovely to read his words about children and parenting and the choices we have in those domains. His discussion of these things speaks for the importance of context and its evaluation. By doing so we can appreciate the value of perspectives and choices that are unlike our own. How refreshing!
Well said, James!