Content to Find the Planet Mysterious and Beautiful

Peter Bebergal’s new piece on KtB, “Bedtime Stumblings,” has prompted a number of reactions. Over on our Facebook page, where some of our most vibrant discussions have been lately (become a fan if you aren’t already!), there were three glowing comments:

Milton W. Kliesch: This is an excellent article about grief and the struggle of faith. It is amazingly honest.

David Mason: Really fine article. You cannot explain faith, faith explains you.

Elizabeth Lorick: Really wonderful. I love how he talks about the power of story. This is so true! I believe if we could listen long enough to really hear one another’s stories, the world would change before our very eyes.

After all that chatter died down, a message came in from Linda on the contact form:

Pls tell the toddler his father has a name that perplexes but writing that pleases.

We will.

Finally, we got an intriguing letter from the poet Quentin Kirk:

My children never asked such questions because I read to them every night from world childrens’ literature.  They very much looked forward to this and they seemed content to find the planet mysterious and beautiful.

He almost seems to be describing a process of immunization—that a certain kind of reading removes the need for a certain kind of metaphysical questions. Can, then, a question be a symptom? And why “world childrens’ literature”? What did it, in particular, offer his children?

We’d be eager to hear more about the connections between children’s stories and how they affect the construction of a person’s curiosity.