The Georgous

WARNING: Please do not read if you are religious.

Georgia goes to a CIW (Church in Wales) school, and as a result she sings hymns, says prayers and goes the whole nine-yards with a Christian ‘God’ that we knew about but never really bothered with.

So anyway….have spent a few days making crosses in school, she comes home one days and asks:

G: Does God look like a man?
Me (keeping in line with our policies of truth): Well, some people think so and some people don’t. What do you think?
G: Ummm… I think it’s all made-up.
Me: I think so too 😉

I didn’t really have to worry about religious influences, or do I?

When asked “What religion I am?” I often stumble and then mumble something about being culturally Buddhist – but in all honesty I find myself at odds to define that I belong to a specific religion.

I grew up with taoist influences (with Gods, Goddesses and ancestral worship), Buddhist teachings, in a Convent school and have been to Churches (Roman Catholic and a range of Protestant ones too).

We have prayed in Hindu temples, visited shrines, bowed our heads at Japanese Shinto temples and seen the inside of mosques.

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In six months time, it would been eleven years that I moved away from ‘home’ – the country of my birth. I try hard not to call it ‘home’ anymore, because that’s not where I live, that’s not where my child was born, that’s not where my heart lies.

Materially, making a home away from home, has not been hard, it has after all just needed money (the house, the car, the furniture etc. ) What has been a little more of a challenge is trying to recreate or replicate certain childhood experiences and memories for Georgia, that we (being from Penang, Malaysia) have so loved and treasured. In short to try to give her the experiences of the culture that defines us, and the worldliness of the variety of religions in the country that we come from, as opposed to the country we now live in.

I know it’s easy to say, she will have her own experiences, make her own memories, but so much of what we experience defines who we become, and while living comfortably and affluently in a developed country now, I sometimes lament the fact that she will miss out on the extremely, diverse, mullti-culture, multi-religion environment, that I took so much for granted when I was growing up. Like they say, you won’t miss it until you lose it!

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