Categories: friends
Date: 08 September 2012 11:20:45
The invention of social media, particularly the Chat in Facebook, is a boon and a blessing to this particular godmother! It certainly makes the keeping in touch with my godsons a much simpler task than it used to be. It's been enormously helpful in maintaining a relationship with them at times when it was difficult or impossible for me to do anything about visiting them.
I did a deal with the godfather of my godsons. He would do presents, I would do the God stuff... We struck this deal at the baptism of the elder godson, and reiterated it at the baptism of the younger. (My godsons are brothers.) We have, on the whole, over the last eighteen years stuck to this simple, but effective division of labour. We continue to reckon the other has the worst half of the deal!
We've had discussions which covered such wide ranging issues as how to deal with forceful evangelists (the boy did well - I was deeply impressed at his simple but effectively direct approach), how to forgive those with unacceptable (to godson) world views, why are there so many different translations of the Bible, and why is it so confusing being a Christian. Mind you, this is the child who once woke me up at 6.00 a.m. to ask about the Trinity, because he was confused. I think I told him then it was confusing, I was confused and it was more than OK to be confused, and we agreed to carry on reading whichever our current reading aloud book was instead.