Daily December 1

In December I try to blog every day.  I hope you will stop by for my Daily Decembers.  There is no rhyme or reason to them.  Just whatever comes to mind--some Christmas stuff, some not, some recipes, some pictures, some thoughts.  Please stop by and have a wonderful December!

So we went on a long trip for Thanksgiving.  Lots of time in the car.  Interesting conversations happen when you sit for hours on end.  Ben was reading out loud to the kids Shannon Hale's new book Princess Academy:  Palace of Stone.  It was a good book.  It had some pretty powerful themes about politics and the right kind of government.  It was interesting to ask the kids their thoughts.  "When is a government bad enough to revolt against it?"  "When you go to war is it worth all the people that will die?"  "What price is worth freedom?  And if a government changes, who is to say it will really change into what you wanted?  What if it gets worse or doesn't really change at all?"  (i.e. the French Revolution) Some pretty deep themes there.  I don't think my seven year old got them, but the older girls did.  One conversation really caught my attention as I was driving and Ben was reading.  He read something about 'racism,' and Miss E, my 10 year old, stopped her dad and asked, "Dad, what is racism?"

I was kind of surprised.  She didn't know what that was?  Was that a good thing or a bad?  I stopped to think, I know we have taught her, but am I a bad mother and missed something?  But then I was thinking, no, I constantly harp and teach and harp some more that it doesn't matter what our skin color is, how big or small we are, what our pant or shoe size is, where we live or what language we speak, it doesn't matter.  We are all children of God and should be treated as such.  And we have talked about history--WWII, the Civil War, Martin Luther King, and even a few weeks ago when I was doing a reading group in Miss E's class we read about  Harriet Tubman and her life.  Miss E was in my group and in the book it talked about how Harriet's life was not her own.  The white people didn't consider her a person.  She was their property, a slave.  Miss E said, "Huh?  How could they not know she was a person?"  and some of the other kids agreed.  The concept was so foreign to them because they knew it was so wrong.  I guess in all our discussions we just never put the name 'racism' to what we were discussing.  These things made me hopeful, especially as we start into a month that we focus more on our fellow brothers and sisters in this world and strive more for peace on earth.  It made me hopeful that maybe we are raising a generation or someday soon will have a generation that could never know what 'racism' is because they never see anyone as 'different.'  A person is a person, no matter now big or small, what color or shape--they are a person of worth no matter what.  Our Savior taught us that, and what a fitting way to honor Him as we come upon His birthday month than to hope for and work for a world where children have to ask 'what is racism?" because they live in a world where it doesn't exist.  I don't think we could ask for a better Christmas present than that.