Santa, The Great Pumpkin, and Wishful Thinking| Nathan & Cameron

Nathan (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron (00:04)

and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister. n this episode, we talk about wishful thinking, helped a little bit by the, it's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown, one of my favorite cartoons and I think one of the great cartoons and I've thought way too much about it and now you get to think along with us about it. Stick around, this will be interesting to you. We talk about, I talk about the possible virtues surrounding telling your kids about Santa and the great pumpkin. Hey, why not be controversial? It's Halloween.

But we also talk about the deeper hope of Christianity and the consolations of that hope and how we cultivate a childlike mindset, not childish, but childlike. As always, like, share, and subscribe. Spread the word. You like our podcast. Tell somebody about it. It really does help. If you want to support the work we're doing, you can do that by going to www.toltogether.com and clicking the donate page.

Nathan (00:06)

For those of you who have been listening to Thinking Out Loud for years and years and years, here we are, our traditional Halloween episode in which Cameron almost always, in the past, has had some kind of controversial take on horror or, I mean, you know, if you know Cameron, you know. Today, for our Halloween episode, we're going to do something more controversial than horror movies and the role of evil and spiritual development and all of that. We're going to talk about Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. Take it away, Cameron.

Cameron (00:37)

I love this cartoon. think it's probably one of my favorites. It's an absolute classic and I've wanted to write about it for a long time. And for those of you who truly don't know who our new listeners, some of you are there. Hi, I'm a horror fan and I'm writing a book on horror with my old grad school professor, Philip Tallon, who heads up the School of Christian Thought. He's the Dean of the School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University. yeah, traditionally, traditionally.

On Thinking Out Loud, I talk about horror movies and I talk about Halloween in enthusiastic terms. And most of the listeners say, ⁓ this is fun. Camera's just wrong and it's okay. So there that is. So, but I've wanted to write about The Great Pumpkin for a while because I think it's a phenomenal cartoon. I like the peanuts.

Nathan (01:23)

Hey, you better describe it. You better describe

it, because maybe not everybody's not fresh in their minds or what it is.

Cameron (01:29)

Yeah. mean, if you haven't, so for those of you who haven't, haven't seen it, this is the Halloween special of Charlie Brown. So Charlie, I think a Charlie Brown Christmas was an unexpected massive hit when it came out. And so there was a lot of enthusiasm for doing a follow-up celebrating a holiday. And so Halloween, a lot was riding on this one.

They didn't know if it would do well. They were pretty nervous. And it's an interesting cartoon because it's some of the elements of it are it's fairly impressionistic. It's got a very interesting color scheme. has absolutely beautiful music. know, Vince Giraldi wrote the peanuts music, the Linus and Lucy song, everybody knows, but then there's the great pumpkin waltz. It's beautiful that the flute plays a prominent role.

which gives it a kind of fluttering, the fluttering spectral sound which brings to mind falling leaves. It's very, but it's very moody stuff for a children's cartoon.

Nathan (02:26)

Now who's in the mood for watching a cartoon with

Cameron when you can get this level of analysis on the color schemes and the composers? Anyway, carry on. To the plot.

Cameron (02:31)

Yeah

But really what it's about is Linus believes in the great pumpkin. And the great pumpkin is a Santa Claus-like figure in his mind. He's writing to the great pumpkin at the beginning of the cartoon. And he believes that the great pumpkin will show up and reward the child of great faith, the child who is the most sincere and waits for him, the great pumpkin, in a pumpkin patch.

So instead of going trick or treating in practical terms, what this means is Linus, instead of going trick or treating, turns his back on all of that and all the very real tangible reward of candy and waits in this pumpkin patch for this figure he's conjured up in his mind. Everybody makes fun of him. Everybody tells him these are misplaced hopes and dreams. When are you going to stop believing in something that's not real? And then he'll counter with, well, when you stop believing in that

great big bearded guy in the sky who goes ho ho ho and then Charlie Brown responds we are obviously separated by denominational differences. So it's so as you can imagine spoiler alert this thing's been out since when I think this came out in the 19 late 60s or something like that it's been out for a while so the great pumpkin does not show up and but does Linus learn his lesson no no he does not at the end of the cartoon he's Charlie Brown says to him the other sort of

Nathan (03:42)

Sounds right.

Cameron (03:55)

They're commiserating because Charlie Brown in true Charlie Brown fashion has gone trick or treating and everybody gets candy, but Charlie Brown just keeps getting rocks put into his bag. I got a rock over and over again because he's Charlie Brown, Mr. Tragic Figure. And he says, don't worry Linus, I believe some stupid things in my day too. And then Linus looks up, stupid, I'll show you stupid next year, you just wait Charlie Brown. So, and that's an end.

Nathan (04:05)

You

Cameron (04:22)

That's how it ends. it's all, I mean, it's very typically, it's a very typical peanut story. It's kind of sad, it's funny, it's whimsical, it's got a good bit of irony about it. But I'm probably reading more into it than any of the creators ever intended for it, but I see wishful thinking as a very profound human habit, and that's very much on display.

in this story. I write occasionally for a publication called Christ and Pop Culture. It's a good digital magazine. I'd recommend their stuff, but I would, wouldn't I? I write for them. I've wanted to write one on the Great Pumpkin for a while and just always got distracted by horror movies and wrote about horror movies the last several Octobers. This time I finally wrote the article. It will come out, comes out on Halloween this year. You can go to Christandpopculture.com and

take a look at the article. But, so I wrote about it. It's all about wishful thinking and there you have it.

Nathan (05:23)

Yeah. So,

so make the case for this because I, you, you acknowledge in the article, somehow I got to see a copy of this pre-publication, tsk, that, there's the, you're, you're, making the case for the long-term religious value in non-religious wishful thinking. think you're making the case that these are good things for us to learn to wish. So make, make the case for the value of wishful thinking.

as a stepping stone to a broader religious epistemological maturity.

Cameron (05:55)

Okay.

So we are born with really, I mean, we're desiring creatures, but we're born with certain desires that are innate. So I'm actually giving to you a philosophical argument here. So let me, I'll state the argument, and this is the argument that makes it into the article. And then we can explore some of its outworkings. And Nathan and I may have a few differences here just in how we look at this in practical terms, but I think Nathan and I would be agreed on the essentials.

of the argument. It is sometimes credited to C.S. Lewis, but it's not quite right to credit it to him because I don't think he would want the credit because he didn't really make a philosophical argument. What he did over the years was he made a few statements that were along these lines, the most famous of which is in the hope section of mere Christianity where he says, if I find in myself a desire for an experience,

that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most likely explanation is that I was made for another world. That's a really powerful quote and observation, but it's not a full-blown argument. If Lewis wanted to make a full-blown argument, he could have. He didn't right there. But others have come along and formalized that a little bit. so one of the two people I think who do it quite well, one is Peter Craeft, and then the other is a philosopher less known named Clifford Williams who wrote a whole book on it.

But basically the argument goes like this, every natural and innate desire has a corresponding object. So let's talk a little bit about some natural innate desires just for a second and then feel free to interject Nathan if you want clarity here or if you think something's gone off the rails. But people at this point will say, okay, I want to fly like a superhero.

Or I want my team to always win. want a team of perpetual champions. I don't want the Mets to ever lose.

or I want fame and power and fortune, all of that. Those are really powerful wishes. And it's true, a lot of people have them, but they're not natural and innate. You acquire those desires. So in other words, you're not born with a desire to fly or for the Mets to always win or for the latest sports car or a mansion in the Hollywood Hills or whatever it is that you want. That comes along later.

But natural and innate desires would be the desire for food, for rest, and on a deeper level for companionship and fellowship. I human beings need, we need interaction. We need friendship. We need fellowship. We need love. And I don't think we have to, I don't have to make a big case for that. So those are natural and right. So those are, they're universal too. That's another way of putting it. Everybody has them everywhere.

Nathan (08:45)

Well, if it's innate, you shouldn't have to.

Cameron (08:53)

There's not a culture on this planet that's going to produce a child or a person that doesn't exhibit these wants and wishes, these needs. And all of them have a corresponding object. You're hungry, there's such a thing as food. Now, C.S. Lewis does state this, you're thirsty, there's such a thing as water. You are lonely and you want companionship, there's such a thing as friendship. So the difficulty, so here's the challenge of the argument is saying that the desire

for something that nothing in this world, for an experience that nothing in this world can satisfy is natural and innate. Somebody can deny that and say, well, no, that's not true. Not everybody has that desire. it's, you you're depending on the honesty of the person you're talking to. As a Christian or as a religious minded person, I would say that's a natural and innate desire. And yes, everybody has it. And there are, even when people deny it, there are ways to kind of

press into that and show that usually people do still want it, even if they're hardened skeptics or atheists. But that's the point of vulnerability in the argument. But if you group that as one of those natural and innate desires, and all the other ones have a corresponding object, it would seem that this is not a proof, but it would seem that this kind of desire for something more, for transcendence, is a

powerful clue into the nature of reality. I'm going to pause there for a second.

Nathan (10:23)

So make it, yeah,

that's helpful. it, yeah, so I think at this point, vast majority of people would be on board with you. Let's take it to the category where people might be like, because you talk about how there seems to be a desire to squash the false dreams and narratives and desires, particularly within Christian circles. And you're talking there about how there always seemed to be some adult who wanted to make sure that they crushed your dreams that your dog was going to heaven. ⁓

Cameron (10:52)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure.

Nathan (10:52)

Or that,

and you're making an argument in the other direction saying, even believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or whatever, ⁓ that there is something that is good about being able to desire something, even if it's not rooted in reality. So.

Cameron (11:08)

Okay,

that's the controversial part of my argument. Yeah, so the story there is growing up, I've always, I love animals, my sister even more so than me, and we are all natural disenchanters in our day and age. We love to burst bubbles and explode myths and...

Nathan (11:13)

Correct.

Cameron (11:35)

It's just, it's something that's very much in the modern ethos.

Nathan (11:36)

Let me so YouTube

videos the real story behind they won't tell you this you've never thought of this this way so-and-so discovers untold Like just listen to that language of it's all bubble bursting of like you thought you were right, but really

Cameron (11:42)

Exactly. Yep.

Yeah, or articles with titles like the real reason behind, you know, whatever this is or the real motivation. Right. Yeah. So let me disabuse you of all your illusions and now give you the hard cold truth and that sort of thing. yeah, especially my sister because she, people would often do this to her. a very, very bright child, loved animals.

Nathan (11:56)

the true meaning of Romans chapter two.

Cameron (12:17)

And they're just, but we were always in these apologetic circles and there would always be this certain type, usually a man who would gravitate toward her and say, too bad, you know, these animals aren't going to be in heaven, right? But first of all, that's a fairly, who knows? That's somewhat dubious claim. And there are plenty of actually very incisive Christian thinkers who disagree, but also just on a very basic level, what on earth would possess you to say that to a young child? I mean, why?

Why would you tell a little girl, you'll never see your dog again?

There's something inherently bizarre about that. And if you've ever done that, shame on you. Think twice.

Nathan (13:01)

Well, most of the things

that we kill, we say you'll never see again, because then we eat them. So my kids have kind of a different framework here of how that all goes. But if some of the things we've eaten turn up in heaven, that'll be a fun surprise.

Cameron (13:11)

But we're talking about, I'm talking about a,

yeah, but I'm talking about, but we're talking about pets right now though. So let's stay in the right category here. Sure, that's true and that's fair. And of course there's the uncomfortable, yeah, question of, no, what's the, the food on the table here? Yeah.

Nathan (13:17)

Yeah.

Well, I got you sidetracked. You're talking about what's the motivation for popping

the bubble. That's the category here. But then let's slide that over into Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. ⁓

Cameron (13:35)

Yeah. So here,

here I know I'm walking through a minefield and I say that I say as much in the article, but so here's, just going to, I'm going to lay my cards on the table. I thought, man, I thought this would be one of those. I thought this would be a lighthearted Halloween episode where Cameron doesn't have a big target painted on his head, but here I am. Give me the, give me the paint. I'm putting, I am going to put it right on my forehead here.

Nathan (13:57)

I'm going to hold

you in front of the firing range. Yep, let's go.

Cameron (14:00)

I don't think there's anything wrong. Not only do I not think that there's anything wrong with Santa Claus, I'm not saying that, here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying if you have young children, you have to, that I think you must tell them about Santa Claus and have them believe in it. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that Santa Claus, and yes, the great pumpkin, can be instructive and helpful tutors of desire.

I'm going to stop there for a second. So they can, I think they can serve a didactic helpful function. I think they can be good. Now hit me, Nathan. ⁓

Nathan (14:35)

Right. Well, yes. And so, so, so let's see, let's,

let's run through the Rolodex of potential pushback here. And then let me offer a mediating ⁓ thought between, because there'd be two extremes here. One would say, well, if you run that through your logical conclusion, then any form of story or fantasy obviously can be said to be helpful in some way, which you should think that through. Perhaps stories are more useful than we know. The...

Cameron (15:01)

Think it through.

Nathan (15:04)

And so I think anybody who disagrees with you there can make, make their own case. The, the extreme opposite version of that is, ⁓ like I know of people who had kids who had imaginary friends who they thought this kid needs to have an exorcism. Like clearly they're possessed because they're imagining things that aren't true. So that would be, that would be an issue.

Cameron (15:21)

Sure. And if this were

a horror film, that would definitely be the case, wouldn't it? Horror film, if a kid has an imaginary friend, run.

Nathan (15:26)

Yeah, so that.

Yeah. So, so that's, that's an extreme in the opposite direction. So it's interesting for me to listen to this because I grew up very much in a framework and world and like none of my kids think there's a tooth fairy or Santa Claus or any of that stuff. It's just not something we go out of our way to. And so there, there is a sense in which like we want, we want to speak. Yeah. We want to speak truthfully and tell true stories. ⁓ but also imagination has been a huge part.

Cameron (15:47)

Well, so did I. So did I, by the way. That's how I grew up.

Nathan (15:57)

of not just my childhood, my sibling's childhood, my kid's childhood, imaginative play, is in its wild just to watch how that ages out over time, ⁓ for different kids at different places.

Cameron (16:04)

Mm-mm.

And that imaginative

play is not strictly speaking true.

Nathan (16:14)

none of it's true. But here's where I would make a distinction is I think I would like to, I want to continue to foster imaginative play without giving false hope. think that's a distinction I would make. And so I don't want my kids standing out in the pumpkin patch waiting for toys from a great pumpkin. Although if they came up with that on their own and were running around pretending it,

Cameron (16:16)

Right. that, yeah.

Nathan (16:43)

I think it's very hard for me to, like in the four to six year old range of like how much a kid actually believes their own imaginary world. Cause it's something they know they generated. They're not losing faith in an adult because something didn't come true. And so that I think it would be, so maybe that doesn't sound like a distinction, but in my mind it is of the difference between fantasy and false hope. Yeah, maybe it would be.

Cameron (16:58)

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, okay.

No, I think it's important.

Nathan (17:13)

and what I'm communicating in that as the adult.

Cameron (17:13)

Let me

Let me put a philosophical gloss on what I said earlier about Santa Claus because I do offer an argument here as well. And I think it's pertinent to the remarks you just made. So we tend to assume that kids are a lot more superficial and shallow than they actually are. That's at the heart of some of our bubble bursting impulses with young kids, I think. That's also why somebody like a Mr. Rogers is very special. A lot of people don't

Nathan (17:40)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (17:46)

still don't notice this about Mr. Rogers. They'll say, he's so wholesome, he's so wonderful. But what they don't realize is he talks to kids like persons. Mr. Rogers, part of his wisdom was that he grasped that kids are very earnest and they're very serious. And most people go to a default where they switch into a different category when they're with kids. hey, how you doing, guy? And they take on a different voice.

Heather and I instinctively, and I've noticed you and Aaron are the same, Nathan, we have never done that with our kids. In fact, Heather had a strict no baby talk policy. Not that we don't speak affectionately to our kids, of course we do, but meaning we don't talk to them as though they're not persons and they're in some different smaller, less serious category. If that's true, then you take a figure like Santa Claus.

We tend to, I've heard a lot of people say basically, well, Christmas is not all about just presents. In fact, that's not even the main reason it's, and of course we're Christians. It's all about Christ and all of that and kids just, we tend to assume that there's just avariciousness behind a child's fixation on the presents and the gifts. But that's not true. I mean, it can be to a point, I mean, all of us have greed in our hearts and all of that, but on a deeper level,

Nathan (19:05)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (19:12)

It's a desire for abundant life, for newness, for the joy and exhilaration of receiving something new and all of the experiences that that brings with it. know this is behind, I can still remember being a kid and being, that was behind, I didn't have that vocabulary, but that was behind my desires when I was a child. It wasn't just the presence itself, it was more than that. And the same with

Santa Claus, lot of people, Christians get bent out of shape, but it's all, it's legalistic, it's workspaced. Yeah, but Santa rewards virtue and there is something profound about that. So yes, can it be manipulated? hey, well, what is Santa going to say about that? Now, so it does get abused, behind that, yeah, elf on the shelf stuff, but behind that can be a hunch for, I say this in the article, cosmic justice.

Nathan (20:09)

Let me try. Can I try? Can I try to make your argument?

Cameron (20:09)

In a sense that in the end, virtue

really is, is yeah, go ahead.

Nathan (20:14)

So, ⁓ just one caveat before I get into that. So I think your point about Mr. Rogers taking the earnestness of children seriously is, like that's great analysis. I think I want to be careful that I never take advantage of that earnestness and that sincerity of belief. ⁓ Two parts of that, one is Jesus talking about causing a little in the center stumble, which I'm not putting that in that category, but...

Jesus is categorically reminding us that we can take advantage of that child likeness in a way that is disastrous. On the flip side, he says that unless we become like that, we won't inherit the kingdom. And so think about a Christmas hymn like, let's use these lines, long lay the world in sin and error pining till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. So that's a, what is that? That's saying,

There's something exciting that's coming. There's something when like, you know, like a kid the night before Christmas or your grand, the grandparents are about to come and we don't know exactly the minute they're going to walk for like, there's this just chaotic, thrilled, jubilant expectation of the thing that is coming that we can see, ⁓ in children. That is the core feature of appropriate Christian belief and expectation as well. And so those, those are those deep.

Cameron (21:14)

Uh-uh.

Nathan (21:38)

longings and joys and anticipations and so if I was doing the best case that I see is kind of taking your argument, you're saying something about practicing those moves is healthy for us because it's what we will need to grow up into, not what we need to grow out of.

Cameron (21:59)

Yeah, growing into is the right phrase. And also, I mean, just speaking practically in my own household, didn't go to painstaking ends to maintain the Santa thing. It's more, I allowed my kids to believe. Dylan, they both basically figured out Santa isn't real very, very quickly. By five, Dylan was already basically.

No, I'm pretty sure I know that you got me this present. mean, he basically had how would he the logistics alone, Dylan just started asking some of those. And so those practical questions. Now I had a next door neighbor growing up who's he the dad in that house went so went to such lengths. He actually got on the roof and stomped around to convince the son, the little boy that Santa was real. I'm not doing that.

Nathan (22:49)

So actually, say something about this.

Say something about this, though. What is the...

Cameron (22:54)

you

Nathan (22:57)

So we're talking about desire from the kids perspective. And then you have said, they're those who delight in crushing the bubble. Like here's the, it's a cruel cold world kids. What's the desire on the parental side to generate and foster belief? What does that desire point to?

The dad on the roof with the making deer noises. What's the...

Cameron (23:15)

Well, to be-

The dad on the, yeah, well you want to, I think it's a desire for your child to have a rich and wonderful childhood and to feel excitement and joy. So those are good motivations. I think it's always a matter of discernment. There's no fail safe formula. For some people, that might be a good practice. For others,

that might lead to a profound sense of disappointment and a feeling of being misled on the part of certain children. You have to know your kid. If I did that to Dylan, he would feel betrayed. With Dylan, the journey of discernment that we went on with Santa Claus was when he would raise these very real questions, I would look at him and I would say, all right, let's work this through then.

Nathan (23:56)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Cameron (24:18)

take this to its conclusion, where does this lead you? And so we walked, it didn't involve me basically saying, I didn't burst the bubble for him, but I let him go there and realize, and there was no major disappointment on his part at all. Now that's my son though, it's gonna look different for different people. But I don't wanna get distracted from the bigger point is that, I say this in the article too.

What's more harmful? A child who is a little bit imaginative and maybe prone to some flights of fancy or a child who's an inveterate reductionist who just sees through everything. And so much of our kids' programs right now that style themselves as being smart, scientific, you know, the STEM programs, you know, A to Twist scientists and all this stuff. It's all about how, hey, you thought this was this C.S. Lewis whaddle.

just absolutely love this. You thought this was this really beautiful, amazing, mysterious process, but actually science is the best. Here's how it really works. And then just taking the wind out of the sails of everything and then just offering this very reductionistic explanation. I want to, I want to take seriously the role of, the imagination. want to take seriously the role of hopes and wishes. think Nathan, you're so right to say though, that we want to

be good stewards and custodians of our children's hopes and wishes and handle that with great care and wisdom and always with prayer. And so for some of us, that means that, yeah, that certain figures like Santa or the great pumpkin, you know, should like maybe shouldn't be a part of our house, but for some of us, maybe they should, maybe they are indeed good tutors of desire and can play a role. Wishful thinking in general, I think, is a very important human habit.

and post-Freud, default naturally, Christian and non-Christian alike, to thinking of wishful thinking as nothing more than a ticket to illusion and fantasy, when in fact, that's not the way it actually is and doesn't have to be.

Nathan (26:34)

So this is what I wanted to... There are two parts to this. ⁓ One is, so you can say... There's a sense in which our inability to be imaginative is what facilitates the reductionism, but you can... You have to think through the reduction. There's a false bottom to this, I think. So, for example...

You're like, well, you thought that when you throw a ball up in the air, like, I don't know what it was, like, it just comes down. But did you really know it's because of gravity? Okay. Like I'm just making something up here. ⁓ I remember as a kid, there was a kid, there was a boy who was trying to be all clever with me and you're like, what goes up? Must come down. What goes up? This is a scientific principle. What goes up? Must go down. And then I threw his hacky sack on the roof of his house. but I wouldn't want to get a physics degree. So I do know how that it will eventually come down, but.

Cameron (27:11)

Yeah, right.

Nathan (27:30)

I thought it was a great response to his argument at the time. ⁓ So, but it's like, you know, what goes up? Well, okay. So, let's, how do we make this reductionistic? We look at a description of the way that gravity works. Okay. So, we reduced it just to gravity. There's no, there's no fun kids game here. Wait a second. And this is where I want to go with my kids, but why does gravity work, Cameron? Why are two masses attracted to each other? Nobody knows. There is no good.

Cameron (27:52)

Mmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Nathan (27:58)

philosophical or scientific

Cameron (28:00)

Yep.

Nathan (28:00)

reason for why you're stuck to the outside of this planet. We can describe beautifully how the process works, but why? We don't know. And so I think the thing is like, I never want to use a shallow form of mystery as a distraction from deeper forms of mystery or shallow forms of wishful thinking for that. So don't miss the forest for the trees, I think would be one of the ways to think about the way that I want.

to develop my own imagination, but also for my kids. Because the ability to think of the world as other than it actually is, is a critical ability for living, but also for spiritual growth and formation, for any type of growth and formation. You have to be able to look at, for justice, for compassion, you have to be able to look at a situation and say, it could be other than this. I can imagine...

this situation being different and I know the steps to take to get to the desired outcome. And since we are Christians, we would say we have some divine help in knowing what the oddness is in that situation. All of those are works that work in your mind, engaging in a world that does not yet exist. So, the idea that this is just a child thing or that it's not practical, no, this is what you do when you make a shopping list in your mind. You're thinking through things that you do not own, that you need, and then working out a way to go and get them.

I mean, that is deeply imaginative and fanciful sometimes, or you think about what color, what your kitchen might look like with a different color on the paint scheme. I mean, this is a necessary part of living, but not just in the physical, but in a spiritual sense as well. So,

Pump that pumpkin up, guess, what we're, like, make it a big one, of saying, let's delight in the desires that we have, but make sure that we give them enough room to grow as far as the Lord wants them to.

Cameron (30:02)

Well said. mean, ⁓ a feature of the Christian imagination or a hallmark of Christian imagination is the ability to see things otherwise. Just like somebody who steps into a fixer upper and it's a real mess, but they don't see this dilapidated house. They see a home. And then through hard work, they're able to transform that space. Human beings are in a similar category. We are transformable.

And the world creation right now is groaning as Paul tells us vividly, but we live in anticipation of a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth. And we got to throw another quote from CS Lewis in here. All the leaves of the new Testament are rustling with that promise. That's from the weight of glory. So living into that and hoping along those lines.

is a very powerful witness to the world around us. And it starts, and it can start, and it should start, I think, in childhood. So, whatever I've said, whatever we've said, part of what we're... Yes, well, got the pumpkin rolling, but what we want to get across is that let your children have the space to dream and...

Nathan (31:16)

Hopefully we've gotten to pumpkin rolling.

Cameron (31:31)

and to imagine, but do it with them. Be co-celebrants of the imagination with them. That way you can walk through them on a journey of discernment where you are actually getting to the heart of the mystery of existence, which is, yeah, I mean, fact that we are all here, that there is this marvelous world, that there is such a marvelous thing as friendship, that virtue is real, that joy is real.

and that there's so, so much more to come. We're in better territory when we begin to feel the gospel as too good to be true, rather than, this isn't good enough. But when we start to recognize that, no, these little glimmers of joy that we have are only faint murmurings and intimations of a future glorious consummation that is beyond our reckoning right now. Hey, that's great stuff. That's exciting stuff.

And kids have an act for it in the way grownups don't, because we tend to get jaded and cynical and love to do things like go and tell kids that they'll never see their dog again. Let's stop doing that and let's start being more excited to enjoy this world and also to anticipate with kids. Best I can do.

Nathan (32:53)

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