All of Us in the Universe are Important

My daughter is very 14 and my wife was criticized by an old friend of hers who is a Catholic Nun. The friend said, "You have put your daughter at risk by not teaching her a religious or spiritual path." Well, we put her in a Christian Private School for one year and that just turned her against Christian bigots in specific and religion in general. So, now I find myself with a daughter, who though she gets almost straight "As" has basically had it with religion at age 14. However,  one of her best friends who has two MDs as parents recently said to her, "I will never have children because it's not ecological." So, my daughter really wants to have children so she is still trying to convince her friend that it is a good idea.

So, my daughter in her own way has grown up in a way like my character "Celeste Weaver" in my "Memories" series and though she is a humanist, moralist and helpful isn't happy with herself or us as parents much like other 14 year olds worldwide.

I suppose this likely is because religion has been paradoxical (to say the least) in my life. So, though my relationship with God, Buddha, The Great Spirit, Nature, whatever you want to call it, is alive and well. I kind of see religion as (damned if you do and damned if you don't) So, either way if you believe a lot of dogma you might just as well kill yourself right now and get it over with before it just drives you completely insane anyway. So, this I kind of how I see most religious dogma.

Or as my 60s friends used to say it, "Your Karma just ran over my Dogma". Which I feel is still a really wonderful line.

So, today we were both saying to her, "We realize you are naturally an Indigo Child". She said, "What's that?" We said, "It's a soul that will be very helpful to the human race." She said, "I don't believe that." I said, "I didn't either at age 14. I was an agnostic atheist just like you are now." She said, "I don't care." We said, "Believing that you are important both to yourself and others prevents suicide. How are you going to stay alive the next 10  years or more? She said, "I don't know but I don't believe what you are saying." I said, "One of the reasons that we believe you will be okay is that you are standing up to us now." She said in typical fashion, "Whatever!" and walked away.

If you are a parent to a teenager in the Western Christian secular world you might have conversations similar to these. Like I said in another article for father's of teenage daughters, "You have to be more disciplined and mature than you ever thought possible with teenage daughters."