Religion.

“It’s better to say a prayer before you eat,” my daughter said before dinner one night. We don’t pray in our home, so I asked her where she got that idea. “School,” she said. I didn’t know prayer was a part of her school day. I asked what the prayer is, and she folded her hands together and bowed her head, eyes closed. “God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food,” she recited.

**

A few months ago I came across a prayer tent set in the middle of campus. From outside of the folded-open flap of the white canopy, I could see written prayers dangling from strings inside and people standing in clusters, reflecting, or individuals kneeling, heads bowed. I felt longing.

**

My friend asks me what my thoughts are on God/spirituality, and I am stumped for a minute. My brain tugs at the strands of religion, tries to separate them from the concepts of God and the spirit. I come up with this: I think all people should feel connected to something greater than themselves so that they can cultivate gratefulness for their blessings. That comes to me most often when I am outside, staring up at the enveloping sky, looking down at the tiny bugs, holding hands with my lovely daughters.

Nature is my religion, I think. The universe is my “God.” Whatever that means.

**

Before school one morning, I ask my daughter if she knows why she prays at school. She says no. I ask her if she knows who the God is that she’s praying to. She says no, and stops bouncing around on my bed. She’s generally interested now.

“Some people think that God is the person who made everything in the world. They think he made the whole world: the dirt and the bugs and the snakes and the trees and the clouds and the sun and the whole sky. Even me and you. So when you pray, you are saying thank you to God for making your food.”

I watch her as she thinks that over. “But where is God?” she asks.

“Some people think he’s in the sky,” I tell her. “In a place called heaven.”

She’s silent, thinking. “No one has ever seen God, so some people don’t think he’s even real,” I tell her. “I don’t even know. So you’ll have to think for a long time about what you believe.”

My daughter laughs suddenly. “Noooo,” she says. “I think he’s in the clouds! He’s getting his head rained on!” She doubles over, laughing hysterically, and starts flopping around on the bed again.

There. I feel it tug, a sense of rightness, somewhere in her silly answer to a serious question, in her very simple and concrete view of what God could be. If I could break that simple response down into its essence, I think it could be a whole bible. The book of light, verses of joy.