by Grace Araujo Kolman.

Created on: July 05, 2008   Last Updated: February 06, 2009

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and
when he is old, he will not depart from it."
- Proverbs 22:6

One of the sweetest memories I have back on my mind is the bedtime when my mom would hold my hand and take me to her bedroom to pray. I remember this moment like it was yesterday: pray to God was a beautiful mystery for me. She taught me we should never go to bed without talking to our Loving Father, and since I didn't have my dad around, I found it comforting the fact that God was my dad. I imagined him very old, with a gray long beard, dressed in a white robe, holding a cane and with a very thundering voice. Now I think he was probably more like a grandfather than a father. When it was raining, my grandma and mom used to tell me to behave, because God was angry with kids who don't behave well. In my grandma and mom's mind, to behave simply meant to be quiet and serious all the time. I grew up with this feeling that our Loving Father was not so "cool", because "what was the problem of being jolly?" I could not get it. I felt like I was a bad girl.

Feeling guilty is not the best way to start a healthy spiritual life, but I believe most of us kind of begin like this, either because we are born in a non-religious family, or because we are born in a family that cares too much about religion and not about God.

When I was a child, it was hard to me figure it out the presence of God that everybody around me was talking about. I also could not understand His love for us, when other "us" were starving and living a miserable life in modern "ghettos". I thought God as being powerful and maybe demanding, so anything He wanted would be done immediately. It was definitely a child's faith, no matter how old I actually was. So, as I began growing spiritually, by experiencing God in different ways, but mainly through tough moments in my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, I finally could "get it".

There are Natural Laws that when trespassed can cause suffering, not only to an individual, but also to an entire community. I also learned that God is not a dictator, but a true Spirit of Justice and Love. He gave us free will in order to gain perfection and holiness. What we do with this power given to us at the moment of our birth becomes our responsibility, and we cannot blame God, but ourselves for the mess our lives and the entire World became. We are God's arms and body in the Earth. The way we live our lives can bring the peace we pray for. Our Creator is within us. When we let Him take us over completely, we begin the job of transforming the World in a better place to live. It becomes His only Sanctuary.

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