Reflecting on Crozier's stories 1

If you'd like to add these to your resources, Karen Crozier has another paper listed at childspirituality.org.

Elizabeth Conde-Frazier co-authored the book A Many-Colored Kingdom. I've not read either yet. In this chapter of Children's Spirituality, both researchers are using the narrative as their research method.

I'll try to do this as a series of short posts.

Crozier shares her own experience as a child: ". . . I said to my mother that I wished I had died as a baby or had never been born because then I knew I would be going to heaven..." Looking back on that experience as an adult, she says, "I was afraid that I would not make it to that place where I believed God abides. I did not know how I would be able to continue to live and please God in a way that would allow me into heaven. For some reason, I had made up my mind that babies had easier access into the heavenly realm than did adults. Consequesntly, if I had never been born, I would not have to deal with the possibility of living in hell without God. . . As a child in a Baptist church, my pastor went through great efforts to save people from eternal damnation... I believe I internalized the reality of hell, even though I was unsure of how to make it to heaven." (Children's Spirituality p. 286-7)

We often don't know what we're communicating to children unless we're listening when they share.