Tag Archives: religion

Balloon Jesus

Posted on by
1

A week ago Saturday, I found myself doing something I never imagined: making Balloon Jesus dance in Rochester’s Pride parade.

When my friend, Nancy, explained that our little church group (Sophia Community) would join other local church communities to march at Pride, I knew I wanted to join – and bring the girls. Given that we have both family members and close family friends who are gay, Ella and Annie are completely un-fazed by the thought of same-gender people loving one another; in fact, hearing that others don’t believe that this is completely okay and normal absolutely astonishes them. “But mom – they’re people! No one can control who they love!”

Participating in the parade would be an opportunity for us to actually demonstrate our acceptance and support at an event where the LGBTQ community feels not only safe but celebrated for exactly who they are.

Also, let’s face it: the gay community knows how to throw a party!

In the aftermath of Orlando, I wanted our outfits to be focused on spreading the love. We spent the morning before the parade decorating some t-shirts and psyching ourselves up for the joyful spectacle that was sure to occur along the parade route.
FODX5728
Annie’s shirt: “PRIDE” {plus drawings of same-sex couples holding hands and a heart with “love” written many times}
My shirt: a geeky music reference that reads |: love is : |  (get it??)
Ella’s shirt: “LOVE is a magic to live by” (the parade’s theme was “Let’s Make Magic”) {also, a drawing of a magic wand}

IMG_6102
Me: “fill the world with music, love, and PRIDE – LMM” (from JLo and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new song, “Love Make the World Go Round,” written in tribute to the Orlando massacre)
Ella: “Love Is Love Is Love Is Love”
Annie: “LOVE is PRIDE”

On the drive over, I attempted to let the girls know that we would encounter some… unusual… costumes, displays, signs, etc. I also shared my not-so-secret hope that we’d be marching near some drag queens, ’cause ever since seeing Kinky Boots, I’ve had a bit of an obsession with men capable of pulling off “female” waaaay better than I ever will be.

Due to blocked off streets, we had to park in a church parking lot about a mile away from our assigned gathering spot and wait for Nancy’s husband, Paul, to shuttle us closer. Paul wasn’t there when we arrived… but a complete stranger another man was. He approached us, saying, “Are you looking to get to the parade, too?” I acknowledged that we were waiting for a ride, but didn’t want to engage in conversation. Being polite to strange men is totally cool, but more than that? Nope. Need to set a good, cautious example for my children.

Then the man said, “Are you waiting on Paul, too?”
Um, yes actually, we are.

“Was he supposed to bring you to Nancy?”
Um, yes actually, he was.

“You’re meeting at 210 Alexander Street, right?”
Yep.

“I’m driving people, too. I can just take you!”

And that is how we wound up riding to Pride in the backseat of a sedan driven by a man we’d met 30 seconds earlier. As soon as we got out of the car – after thanking the nice gentleman for the ride – I whirled around to Annie and Ella and said, “You do understand that accepting rides from strangers is usually a DEFINITE NO, right?”

Good examples, y’all.

Although it took a while to make our way to 210 Alexander, the walk over gave us an opportunity to pass the other participants, floats, etc. I had to stop and collect myself at the We Are Orlando group, where marchers held photos of each of the massacre victims, but otherwise, it was pretty much the very definition of happiness.

All ages and races, rainbow everything, glitter, spandex (so much spandex), butterflies, mermaids, leather bodysuits and masks (the Rochester Kink Society float was particularly eye-catching), tutus, Speedos, unicorns, a log cabin-esque float for a local gay campsite, muscular bare-chested men with towels around their waists atop a float advertising “Bathhouse: The Musical!” … and more smiles and laughter than I can remember seeing in one place in a long damned time.

Oh – and Balloon Jesus. Gimme a sec.

After taking only 20 steps or so, the girls’ eyes were so wide, they looked like young Botox patients gone awry. I leaned close to whisper, “Normally, I’d tell you it’s rude to stare… but everyone here is dressed up specifically so you’ll look at them – so feel free to look! Just try to make your expressions more ‘interested’ than ‘terrified,’ okay?”

I’d seen some in-progress photos of the Sophia Community float, but didn’t know what to expect from the final product. When we rounded the corner to 210 Alexander, I could  vaguely make out a large balloon structure in the distance. This didn’t surprise me – Nancy and I have a friend, Kelly, who makes incredible balloon sculptures for a living (how cool is that!), so having a balloon sculpture as part of Sophia’s float wasn’t particularly unusual.

I briefly considered the possibilities – a balloon cross? Doves? Angels? – but then, upon realizing what it actually was, said aloud, “Oh my gosh. It’s Balloon Jesus.”
13775354_10208194604814417_2709941056032193408_n

The first great thing about Balloon Jesus was all of the phrases he inspired. “Let’s go meet Jesus!” “I know we’re where we belong because we’ve found Jesus.” “We’ve been touched by Jesus!” 

The second great thing about Balloon Jesus was the sculpture itself. Kelly always does a remarkable job of turning balloons – balloons!! – into incredibly realistic-looking re-creations of whatever she’s modeling, but Balloon Jesus was particularly fantastic. I mean, he looked like Jesus (or whatever I imagine Jesus looks like). To make him more authentic, Nancy had requested that the balloons for Jesus’s skin not be pink or peach – as a Middle Eastern man, Jesus wasn’t light-skinned – and the tannish color of his radiant face was pretty terrific.

The very greatest thing about Balloon Jesus, though, was the reaction that onlookers had upon seeing him. One of the floats behind us was for a local nightclub, and it blasted pop-y music as we made our way along. (This float also featured drag queens; score!) Marching to the celebratory sound waves, Nancy and I – who were each holding a stick propping up one of Balloon Jesus’s hands – decided to move Jesus’s arms so that he appeared to dance.

The parade route was a relatively straight shot, so it was pretty easy to see the folks on the sidelines before we reached them. We watched as they scanned each float or marching group, shouting affirmations (“Happy Pride!”) and cheering. We also watched as their eyes eventually panned to our float, narrowed with contemplation about what on earth they were viewing, and then widened with joy-filled realization.

That’s when the awesomeness really began.
IMG_6092
IMG_6090
Other awesomeness: tossing candy!

It was fun, certainly, hearing people call out some version of, “Balloon Jesus is dancing!” and calling back, “Yes, he is!” It was affirming and lovely hearing a good half-dozen onlookers delight, “Hooray! Jesus isn’t white!” or “It’s black Jesus! YASSSS!” 

But I was unprepared for how it would feel hearing people yell, with triumph and utter jubilation, “Hey – you’re right! Jesus loves EVERYBODY! Even us!!”

I never thought I’d feel comfortable shouting to the world, “Jesus loves you!” And yet, as these rainbow-bedecked onlookers gleefully cheered at the thought of Jesus accepting them, when maybe their faith communities had not, it felt not only comfortable but pure, real, beautiful. “Yes, he does! JESUS LOVES YOU!”

I am so grateful to have found Sophia Community, whose members espouse what I’ve always felt about Jesus: that we are, indeed, loved just as we are. That’s the grace and power of God’s love; it is endless, boundless, and meets us right where we are. God’s love is for Ella, Annie, and me. It is for those who go to church every Sunday and those who will never step foot inside a cathedral. It is for those who pray religiously (yes, a pun; God has a superb sense of humor) and even for those who don’t believe.

God’s love is for everyone marching and everyone on the sidelines – the married heterosexual couples with kids, the older men in dapper hats holding one another’s hands, and the younger women with multiple piercings wearing rainbow tank tops that said, “GAY AS F*CK” (there were a good many of those). God’s love is, sometimes to my annoyance, even for the guys on the corner shouting through megaphones that God says gay people are going to hell.

I’d worried that, by marching in the parade instead of standing on the side, we’d miss out on (what I assumed to be) the best part: seeing all of the participants. Now, I understand that, by marching, we had the remarkable opportunity to spread the Love Wins message, to see people feeling accepted and celebrated for exactly who they are… because of Balloon Jesus.

It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Amen!
IMG_6108

 

Un-Weird: They’ve Got to be Carefully Taught

Posted on by
1

It’s been a heckuva couple of weeks.

Okay, so that’s putting it mildly.
Shit has really hit the fan, hasn’t it?

Last Sunday, after learning about the Orlando massacre, I wanted nothing more than to hole up with my phone and consume as much information as possible; it was almost all-consuming, this desire to know more, to reach out, to stay connected.

Simultaneously, though, was this desire to stay as far from the news as possible. There’s so much going on this time of year – family birthdays, end of school, beginning of summer, my girl “graduating” elementary school (I can’t even) – that I viscerally recoiled from the external forces that seemed intent on taking the little time and energy I had away from what mattered most… Meaning I also wanted nothing more than to hole up with my girls and Nick and the dogs and weed the garden and listen to Ella and Annie read to me and hug everyone as much as humanly possible.

In the end, we wound up telling the girls about the attack – in part because we would be watching the Tony Awards that night (duh) and I knew they were dedicating the show to Orlando, and in part because we thought they might hear about it in school and we wanted them to hear it from us, first.

(During their school’s annual Flag Day celebration on Tuesday, the flag was taken down before the ceremony – as it always is – so that it could be re-raised for everyone to see, followed by The Pledge of Allegiance. This year, the flag crested the top of the pole… and then was lowered down again until it reached half-mast. The jarring juxtaposition of the mourning flag, the kids in their patriotic regalia, and the words of The Pledge – “with liberty and justice for all” – was not lost on the parents in attendance.)

After we shared the basics, the girls asked – as they always do when they hear about hate-filled crimes – why anyone would do such a thing; do they not know that gay people/black people/women/transgendered people/Americans are okay? How do they not get it? We answered honestly that we don’t know; it makes no sense to us. There’s fear that fuels hatred… but beyond that, we don’t know why – not really.

Nick ended our discussion by saying, with resignation, that he didn’t know what the take-away message was — but he was so sorry these sorts of things are reality. At first, I agreed; but upon further reflection, I realized there was a message I wanted to impart:

Be kind.
See other human beings as just that – human beings – rather than “others” simply because they’re different. 
Don’t fight hatred with hate; fight it with love and knowledge and understanding.
And never forget that one individual – who claims to be part of a community – doing evil things does not mean that that entire community is evil, not by a long shot.

The girls looked at me like I had two heads; my “advice” was so basic as to be assumed. “Thanks so much, Captain Obvious. THIS IS ALL YOU’VE GOT?”

IMG_7315
Unrelated annual Memorial Day photo…

The background to all of this fear and hatred and judgment – from nutty “bathroom bills” to the absurd six-month Stanford rape case sentence to ISIS to Orlando to Britain to the lambasting of the parents whose two year-old was tragically killed by an alligator – has been Hamilton. I mean this literally and figuratively: the soundtrack has been on an almost-constant loop in our house, and the storyline is fresh in my mind.

Immigrants coming to America. Native-born residents taunting said immigrants and grousing about how they take away from those who were here first. Disagreements on the size and role of government. Pride causing people to do really stupid things. Women being treated as objects. Gun violence. People attacking one another simply because they see things differently.

The parallels between this 200+ year-old story and the craziness of today have made recent events almost entirely surreal.

The musical ends with Alexander Hamilton’s killer/rival/one-time friend Aaron Burr lamenting that he should have known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and him. (No, we haven’t seen the show and won’t before Lin-Manuel leaves… but we did snag tickets to a February performance. Only eight months to wait, yo!)

That’s the crux of it, I think – the crux of everything. Somehow, we allow ourselves to fall into the belief that there simply isn’t enough… space, time, energy, money, resources, love, etc. for all of us. It becomes us versus them. We fuel our narratives with fear. If you’re not like us – a different race, another sex, transgendered, gay, a different religion, from another part of the world – we let those fear-fueled stories take over until…

… well, until there are half-mast flags during Flag Day and dancing nightclubbers gunned down by an extremist and people screaming (literally) for a ban on Muslims and folks being harassed just for trying to use the loo.

The thing is, though? Our kids don’t get it. No, I mean it: they don’t understand any of this, because they cannot fathom this us versus them mentality. As Rodgers and Hammerstein so aptly said, “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear… Before you are six or seven or eight – to hate all the people your relatives hate.” So we’re trying a different approach.

A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook about the push by some for Elsa to be shown as gay in Disney’s Frozen 2 – and how I thought that was unnecessary, but how I also thought it was nonsensical for people to oppose the idea on the grounds that they’d need to explain it to their children, or it would be too confusing for kids.

My awesome friend, N. – who happens to be a lesbian – backed me up with these fantastic sentiments:

Exposing children to things at a young age is soooooo important. Just like ‘love is an action…not just a word’…so is parenting.

It’s pretty simple. Things are only ‘weird’ to kids because parents make them that way.

YES, this.

Our girls live charmed, privileged lives. They want for little and go to a (wonderful) school that is not racially diverse. Largely because of that – because we know that their personal experience is what will shape their view of the world and of the people sharing this planet with them – we have deliberately made efforts to introduce them to things that are different from their experiences, to make those things un-weird.

It’s much harder to talk disparagingly about “them” when you’ve met them face-to-face.

Also – although their worldview is narrow, we make a point to discuss as much as we can, to give them language and context. Just prior to Ella’s kindergarten year, a friend of mine told me she and her partner informed their son that they were gay. He’d never heard the term before – their life was all he knew – but they wanted him to be familiar with it before he started school, in case the other kids mentioned it. Nick and I thought this was a good idea, so we – casually, matter-of-factly – told the girls that they were half-Asian, lest they hear the word at school and debate it (“I am not Asian!”). They’d never heard that term and were fascinated (Annie wanted to know “which parts” of her were the Asian parts).
IMG_7307

This isn’t good or bad or anything in between; it just is, we told them.

And so it has gone with everything else. They know we’re Christian – but not everyone is. They have classmates who are Jewish and Hindu and Muslim and atheist; none of them is good or bad or anything in between; they just are. We’re straight; their uncles are gay. It’s not weird, because it just is what it is. They have strong opinions about Donald Trump (yes, really); they also know that people they love may be voting for him, and that doesn’t make them bad people; it just is.

None of these differences makes people weird (well, maybe the Trump voters…), and it certainly doesn’t make them worth hating.

The more Annie and Ella learn about people who are unlike them, the more normal – and human – those people become. So, when they hear stories of racism or sexism or homophobia or religious persecution, they are genuinely confused. “But they’re not weird. Why would anyone hate them so much?”

As I said, there’s so much else going on in life right now, I haven’t even begun to process recent current events – and I definitely don’t have any big answers. But I think all of our kids may be the place to begin. If they can be distraught that Burr didn’t realize the world was wide enough for him and Hamilton… they can be distraught that anyone thinks the same today.

We need to teach them that “different” doesn’t mean “bad” or “weird” or “wrong” – it just is. We need to do it before they are six or seven or eight… So they don’t have the hate.

It’s a place to start, anyway.

 

 

 

Finding my religion

Posted on by

I am not really what you’d call religious.

We do celebrate Christian religious holidays like Christmas and Easter – but we also eat latkes and spin dreidels during Hanukkah, just because we enjoy it. Ella and Annie were baptized in our wonderful, little Episcopal church back in Westchester; Ella’s (phenomenal) godparents are Jewish. I took the girls to church weekly for years, but I’ve never read the Bible. In fact, I’m unfamiliar with most biblical stories unless they’ve worked their way into popular lexicon.

I would probably be a great People magazine Christian. “Joseph’s Eleven Brothers: Where Are They Now?”

With that being said, religions have always fascinated me, both from a personal/ spiritual and a historical/ anthropological perspective. Theology is really cool; understanding the beliefs of different religions is something I believe in, deeply.

Still, I haven’t exactly felt that belief, myself. I mean, I know that I believe – in God, in Jesus – but it’s never really moved me. I really wish it would.

I want to figure out how to make sense of my liberal social politics, my love of science, the voices of my friends who feel that people who believe in God are either stupid or blind, my negative experiences with organized religion… but also that part inside of me that just knows there’s something more out there, that does believe in God, that wants to reconcile that belief with all the rest of the stuff I’m lugging around.

easter8
Cyclops Easter egg!
I know this photo seems oddly out of place; I think it’ll make more sense in a minute…

Basically, I want to attend a church run by Anne Lamott, Glennon Doyle Melton, and maybe Brené Brown, too. These women rock my world. They curse. They openly support gay rights. They don’t take the Bible literally. They doubt. They wonder. They encourage and enlighten and broaden and brighten and inspire, not to mention that they’re freakin’ hilarious. BUT ALSO they feel super-tight with God and Jesus and don’t feel weird about saying so. I want me some of THAT religion.

Alas, these three amazing women live nowhere near me… but I’ve found the spirit of their messages in the new little start-up church that I’ve been attending since October, Sophia Community. Every week, we gather together, read from the liturgy, and discuss it (“Um, what the heck is going on here? Why on earth would this be in the Bible? I really don’t like this passage.”). We wrestle with finding meaning in the words, even though we don’t take them literally. We pray, hard. It’s a completely safe space; every viewpoint is encouraged. There are no right answers, and I have loved every minute of it.

Still, I’ve been waiting for the Big Moment — I mean, I’ve been reading biblical passages, I’ve been talking and thinking and opening my mind! I am talking about Jesus and it doesn’t feel totally weird!!! Surely my spiritual epiphany is just around the corner. COME AND GET ME, GOD!

Well, it’s been a lot of months and no bolts of lightning. Damn it.

easter5
Just one more sentence and these photos will make sense, I promise…

When my grandma asked us if we were going to church on Easter (AH HA!) morning, I quickly answered (maybe a little too quickly) that we were not. We used to for the sake of “tradition,” but when the girls began absolutely dreading the service and Easter morning became a combination of wrestling match meets bribery meets hysterical sobbing, I decided that the church traditions I really enjoyed on Easter were a) the music and b) wearing new clothes. Forcing Ella and Annie to sit through the service by shoving jelly beans in their mouths and threatening to take away their Easter baskets if they didn’t stop braiding the bookmarks in the hymnals just didn’t feel right… so we stopped going.

Instead, for the past several years, I’ve pulled up the “Hallelujah Chorus” on YouTube and we’ve all slapped on new duds on our way to brunch and all has been right with the world.

Well, almost all. A lot of people seem to get really excited about Easter – like really, really excited. They exude this JOY about it that seems to go beyond excitement over Cadbury caramel eggs (it must be caramel; the creme eggs are gross). I, myself, get pretty psyched about those eggs and I love watching my girls with their baskets… but true joy at Easter has been basically nonexistent for me.

This year, especially with all of my new Jesus knowledge, I wanted to find Easter joy. Joy is fun. Joy is feeling. I wanted to FEEL Easter.

So, after the girls had gone to bed the night before the big day, I decided to haul my Bible and, for the first time ever, read the four New Testament accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection. The stories were interesting enough (I honestly had no idea that they were completely different from one another; I mean, it’s the same story four times – how different can it be? HAHAHA WRONG) and I was genuinely bummed out by the way that Jesus died, but I wasn’t moved. No joy for me.

When Easter morning came around, the girls waited patiently for us to come downstairs so that they could earn their eggs. Yes, that’s the right word – earn. The previous day, Nick and I had told them that we didn’t have the energy to create an elaborate scavenger hunt for their eggs and baskets (as we did last year), but we could either hide their eggs or they could earn them. To our surprise, they chose B: earning their eggs.

easter01
Nick and I hemmed and hawed over whether or not to make the tasks fun/silly or actual work. In the end, we chose a combination of both… with heavy emphasis on the silly… and wrote them down on little cards, to be chosen at random in the morning.

easter3
This is what awaited the girls when they came downstairs: a bowl with tasks to earn their eggs, the eggs themselves (one completed task = one egg), small baskets in which to put their eggs, and one final egg each that told them it was time to go find their actual baskets.

And so, on Easter morning, Annie and Ella sang to us, played the piano, made our bed (holla!), engaged in some Harry Potter trivia, cleaned the kitchen floor (for real), and played cards in order to get their eggs and baskets. As we dealt the fourth hand (’cause nothing says “He is risen” more than competitive card games), Nick and I looked at one another and said, “This is already the best Easter ever!”
easter4
Giggling over Cad (a family card game).

easter2

An Easter duet (okay, so it was “Heart and Soul,” but it totally captured the exuberant spirit of the day).
Even the more “serious” tasks were met with gleeful enthusiasm… Chocolate and presents are powerful bribes motivators, y’all!

easter6

We dyed eggs with my grandma, listened to “The Hallelujah Chorus,” got all fancied up, and went to brunch; we were totally knocking this Easter out of the park. Then, on our way home from the restaurant, the girls leaned forward in the car and said, “Ummm… So, what is Easter again?”

You’d have thought, after being dragged to church all those years, something would have stuck. Apparently not. (Except the jelly beans.)

Have you ever tried to explain Easter to young kids? Holy crap – it is THE CREEPIEST story EVER. Murder… coming back from the dead… walking around, talking to people… HOW WEIRD IS THAT?!?! Jesus is basically a zombie and everyone thinks it’s great. Let’s celebrate by dyeing eggs! Oh, and a bunny came to the house last night and dropped off a basket! Yay, Easter!!

So I told Ella and Annie the story, they nodded their heads (“Oh, right… Jesus came back from the dead… I remember now…”), but I could see that, even though they’d heard me, it wasn’t making any sense. They didn’t get why Easter was so special.

I understood. I mean, for the past 39 years, I haven’t gotten it, either.

Mostly, I’ve been okay with this. Easter’s just strange; no need to “get it” to have a good time. As the day went on, however, I grew unsatisfied with my answer. Because, frankly, Zombie Jesus isn’t a very happy thought. Just ’cause the Bible says it’s special doesn’t make it feel special – not for me, anyway. I wanted more.

And as I thought about it – as I considered why Jesus’s resurrection was such a big deal beyond the zombie mechanics of it – I felt something shift. I found myself calling the girls back and saying, “I want to talk to you a bit more about this. You know how I’ve told you that the Bible says that Jesus was dead, and then he wasn’t, and that’s what Easter is? And you know how you think that sounds really weird – probably because it is really weird? Well, I think there’s more to it than that.”

So I told them what I’ve learned, starting with ideas I’ve heard from Sophia Community, from Anne Lamott and Glennon Doyle Melton. As I went on, though, I discovered my own ideas — about why Jesus was different from the people who’d come before him, how he was really an awfully cool and amazing guy, how radically new his message was — not about God and the bible and “being saved,” but about us. About how we’re just right exactly as we are, about how we don’t need to do any more to be worthy of being loved; we are, with our flaws and imperfections, exactly who we are supposed to be. We are each enough, and we are loved, and we can do this.

It doesn’t matter if the story if real, I told them. It doesn’t matter if it ever happened. It doesn’t even matter if Jesus was real (although I think most scholars agree that he was, in fact, a real actual human; the whole divine thing is up for grabs). What matters – for me – is the message that Jesus, or even the idea of Jesus, spread: the message of love, of connectedness, of wholeness, of you are good enough just as you are. I have no idea if any of this really happened, but it doesn’t make a difference; the message, and how that message makes me feel, is what matters.

And as I spoke, I felt this very unfamiliar thing burbling up inside me – a little like indigestion, except it was happiness. It was joy.

easter9
Easter brunch in our fancy duds. Tradition, preserved!

The week before Easter, we were visiting family in Charleston and had the honor of attending my cousin’s daughter’s baptism. Before the big day, we were chatting with everyone, including my cousin’s father-in-law – a retired Episcopal priest who was in town to perform the baptism (and visit with his baby granddaughter!). Annie happened to casually slip into conversation that we used to go to church, but hadn’t in a while (kids are such fun), and then followed up with this gem, “What even *is* religion? I don’t think I have religion.” 

As I was struggling to craft a response that would explain that, of course, we have religion and how much I love my little Sophia Community and that I haven’t completely led the kids astray — TO THE RETIRED PRIEST — my cousin’s father-in-law just smiled at my little heathen and answered, without missing a beat (I’m paraphrasing slightly here because I don’t remember the exact words, but the sentiment is true and real),

“Oh, Annie, I promise you you’ve got religion. What religion boils down to – no matter which one it is – is that we’re all in this together, and we’ve got love in our hearts, and we’re helping one another. I watched you tonight, helping out, laughing. Everything you did, you did with such love. Your love came from inside of you and you gave it to all of us. That’s religion; I saw it. You have definitely got religion.”

All these months, I’ve been looking for my religion – in church, in books, online, in discussions. I’d hoped, if I figured out enough, if I learned enough, that I would find God or Jesus or something; I’d hoped I would feel it.

Turns out, my religion’s been right here inside me all along. (This is sounding an awful lot like The Wizard of Oz…) It’s in card games on Easter morning, it’s in the “You were great!” text from a friend, it’s in the holding open the door for someone at the mall, it’s in your husband and mom and dad being proud of you, it’s in the hugs that my girls give me each night before they go to sleep.

I still don’t consider myself religious, but I have definitely got religion.
IMG_2853a
My little heathens and me all gussied up on Easter. 
They are my religion, every last one of them.