Eyes Wide Open

Jacen and I were saying prayers together before bed last night. He's learning the Lord's Prayer (He calls it "The Jesus Prayer"), so I said every line and let him repeat it after me. Teaching him the Lord's Prayer has brought up some interesting discussions. The very first time we went through the prayer with him, he got totally sidetracked on the "lead us not into temptation" part. He has a Larry Boy movie where the Bad Apple weaves webs of temptation, and when the characters fall for their temptation, they get totally stuck. So when he heard the word "temptation", he stopped thinking about praying, and had to tell us all the story of Larry Boy getting caught in a web of chocolate temptation. That happened the next couple times we said the prayer as well--he even started yelling about Larry Boy in church one time as the congregation said the Lord's Prayer together. But the next time I watched Larry Boy with him, he was able to tell me about the prayer, and that we don't want to be led into temptation, because otherwise we get stuck doing things we shouldn't do over and over again. Last night, we were saying the prayer again, and when we finished, he asked me what "daily bread" was. So I asked him what he thought that meant. First he said, "I don't know", but when I pushed him a little, he said, "I think it's like, when I get big like Daddy, then I'll get a piece of bread and a little cup of juice at church. That's the bread that Jesus gives us." I was surprised, and a little bit impressed by his answer, becuase it showed a lot more understanding than I would have expected from him. So I told him he was right, but that Jesus also gives us all of the food we eat every day, and that in the prayer they say bread to mean all of the food we get every day. He seemed happy with that answer, and went to bed. This morning, though, I gave him a PBJ for breakfast, and he said to me, "Jesus gave us this sandwich, right, Mommy?"

Right, Jacen. That's exactly right.

Song of the Week

I have a lot of opportunities to do things with friends this week, so my song for this week is my favorite song about friendship.

Frogs, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails

Jacen is the boy who has a stick in his hand whenever he's outside, and probably a pocket full of rocks as well.

He's the boy who can spend hours playing with a cardboard box and a shoestring.

The one who yells, "Ka-Chow!" or "To the rescue, to save the day!" every time he takes off running.

The one who runs half a block ahead and then comes sprinting back, covering twice the distance I do when we walk.

He's the boy who talks to birds, bugs, and animals, fully believing they understand what he's saying.

The one who growls and glares at you when he's mad instead of yelling or sulking.

And the one who can identify a dozen different species of shark at the age of 3.

Jacen is also the boy who takes pride in saying meal time prayers for everyone.

He's the boy who reminds me if he forgot to say please, or if I forgot to say please.

And he's the boy who jumps up on the couch to give Mommy and Daddy half a dozen kisses each to celebrate that Super Duper Jacen once again has saved the day.

Song of the Week

I usually pick a favorite song to inspire my mood and/or actions for the week. I thought I'd start sharing them here.

I love the idea of this song. My greatest aspiration is to be the kind of Christian whose faith is so apparent that it demands a response from my environment.

I Might Have To Try This...

Apple Cinnamon French Toast

Yum!

Carrying His World on His Back...

Today Jacen is wearing his backpack and filling it up with his most important possessions. It's interesting to watch him. So far the contents include:

~3 books
~notebook, crayons, and stickers
~teddy grahams
~Larry Boy and Alfred figurines
~Lightning McQueen
~Mr. and Mrs. The King
~2 pieces of train track
~Noah (the ark doesn't fit...)
~2 elephants
~2 "maps" (books from inside DVD cases)
~2 "Jacen sized" bottles of lotion
~Spiderman
~tennis ball

Would Cinderella Turn Down Her Prince?

Jacen is totally into movies. He can come up with movie references on the fly, and often compares real life events to something he saw happen in a movie. Even with his one-movie-per-day limit, I still have the opportunity to watch an awful lot of kids movies.

This week I've noticed an odd theme in the end of his movies. All kid shows end predictably the same, with the hero or main character finally resolving the conflict by making the right or moral choice, and therefore saving the day. A lot of newer movies are adding a second part to the resolution: the hero nearly always is offered a reward and then, for some noble reason, turns it down. I can't help but wonder, what's wrong with the reward? I know we don't want to teach our kids that we do the right thing to get "stuff", but I also believe there are times when God gives us blessings as a direct result of following his will, a.k.a. doing the right thing.

There are two movies that have really struck me. The first is 'Cars'. In the end of the movie, Lightning McQueen gives up winning the Piston Cup to help the veteran racer, The King, finish his last race. Obviously a noble choice, especially when compared to the foul play of Chick Hicks. Some things are more important than winning--what a great moral! But after the race, McQueen is offered sponsorship by the top racing sponsor, and turns it down, claiming loyalty to his previous sponsor. Maybe the part of this that bothers me, is that you look at the Rusteez team and it screams, "Bad career move!!!" all over it. I think more than that I wonder, would it have been wrong for McQueen to accept the sponsorship? Did they even need to include that scene? After all, the real moral of the story is already so clear it almost makes you roll your eyes. And would the moral have been hurt if McQueen had accepted the sponsorship? The other one I noticed this week, especially after watching 'Cars', was Veggie Tales' 'The Pirates who Don't Do Anything'. This one ends with the pirates saving the princess, and then saving the dinner theatre they work in as waiters (Cabin Boys), and sending Robert, the bad pirate, back to his own world. After which their boss offers them all jobs in the show, which they turn down, saying, "We don't need it, life has enough adventure on its own." Agian my first thought is, bad career move. The pirates are now stuck in their dead-end waitor jobs, and even though the Help Seaker returns at the very end to offer them another out-of-this-world adventure, they're totally ignoring their needs and the needs of their families in the real world. This one really bothers me, because there is no real moral benefit to the characters turning down their reward.

Maybe I'm over-analyzing this, but I just wonder what movie writers think they're teaching kids by adding this tag to the ending. There's more to life than money, true, and that's a good message for kids. But can't we just leave our heroes reaping the non-monetary rewards that came from their good deeds? Why must the right choice be to turn down the better option? I don't think the moral is clear enough to warrant including it in movie after movie.

I'm obviously not going to cut these movies out of Jacen's collection. The issue is not a life-or-death one, or even a serious moral conundrum. It's simply a trend that I don't fully understand.

I like my Cinderella stories; let the maid become the princess in the end.