My daughter is very proud of her beliefs and loves her Goddess.  Diana showed up in a dream of hers around the age of 6 and that was that.  I find it wonderful that she has a distinct Deity relationship separate from mine, one that manifested all on its own at an early age, and that she has the freedom to express and explore it.  She’s getting a chance I never got and I’m thrilled for her, even if she chooses another path later in life.

However, I’m having to nip a little problem in the bud lately.  To my daughter, Deity being Female and Male is common sense.  Which means that, to her, anyone unable to accept that God could be Feminine in nature is, pardon the uncouth phrase, stupid.  Stupid because it’s obvious to a 9-year-old and therefore shouldn’t be so hard for adults to get through their heads.

She’s pretty down on Christian mythology and cosmology, too.  She knows that we come back and are born again into a new life, and doesn’t understand why a whole religious group wants to believe in a nasty place called Hell.  And don’t even get her started on the topic of everyone but Christians are wrong…  Scorpio females really don’t like being told they don’t know what they’re talking about.  Come to think of it, that might be ALL females.  *looks sheepish*

So, it’s been a struggle to get her to understand that regardless of what she may think about the inconsistencies and insanities of adult religious expression and entanglements, she still has to show respect for that other path.  But who am I kidding?  I’ve heard no less come from the mouths of adult pagans and Wiccans.  I’ve certainly heard it put even less kindly and more loudly.

I want to teach my daughter that respect is the founding stone of communication.  We can’t always ensure that we will receive it from others, but we can make our efforts to extend it because OUR ethics state it is the right thing to do.  I try to model this for her and I also emphasize it with Seekers.  Ask any of them how often I quote from different world scriptures during the course of a class — they’ll tell you how annoying I can be, all in the name of reminding them that there is a fine line between being critical and being condemning.

I keep my thoughts positive that one day we may see a day when faiths again learn from each other and we realize that regardless of our differing answers, the questions of human existence are the same, binding us together.  But in the meantime, there can be no good that comes of imitating the very judgements enacted towards us.

Photo by Sebastian Niedlich (via Flickr).