Monday, December 19, 2011

What Does It All Mean?


I wrote a post a while back about how, in Catholic school, we were presented with concepts well above our understanding, burdening our little minds with weighty theological terminology. A lot of this came in the Catechism, in which a question was asked and an answer given to be memorized. In the very early grades, some of this we could understand, if we cared to delve into it, but most the our responses  sprang to our lips automatically, for which we could accumulate holy pictures of agonized looking saints. By the fourth grade, preparing for Confirmation, things got a bit  more complicated, and asking for explanations was not encouraged. Our heads were full of big words about bigger matters, like "occasions of sin," "plenary and partial indulgences," "transubstantiation," and the like. We never never questioned these mysteries, so they stuck in out little heads forever.
The illustration above, done by Sally when she was 7 or 8, is an excellent example of the way a child's mind, confronted with one of those mysterious  pronouncements in religion class, tries to get around that mystery. I don't think anyone answered her query. I don't remember hearing about a wind blowing through the room during the visit of the holy spirit. I remember being confused as a child by pictures of the apostles with little flames over their heads. I knew it had something to do with Pentecost.  My nun didn't mention what that meant or anything about a wind. In Sally's picture, she has a sort of round thing dripping with flames hanging over the table at which the apostles were seated, as if they had yet to settle on the heads of the apostles. She needed to get that wind out of the way first. I love the look on the face of the questioning apostle. I have saved this drawing for over forty years. It is one of my favorites of the many drawings my children did. I cannot answer the question that Sally used this drawing to ask it.

2 comments:

SallyB said...

Honestly, some part of me vaguely remembers drawing that picture. I don't remember if we were supposed to do it for school or what, but I remember feeling very confused about all of that Pentecost tongues of fire thing. I sort of remember being told that there was this blast of wind that preceded those little tongues of fire appearing over the heads of the apostles, and me being the ever so logical kid, I could not figure out what that must have been like, so I did my best to draw a picture to try to make some kind of sense out of what I'd been told in school. Why the nuns try to explain to kids all this confusing stuff when they are in no position to comprehend it, I'll never understand.....

Expat Hausfrau said...

Just the sort of situation a Catholic school loathes - a curious, questioning child!