Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Best definition of the universe I've heard yet

My daughter's first grade class is assembling a book on geography. Each child was assigned a geographical concept to look up in the dictionary. Then they write the word on their page with the definition and draw a picture of it. A few kids were assigned two pages, so all the concepts would be covered. Leah got "prairie," and then she got "universe."

Universe?

She diligently looked it up in our illustrated children's dictionary, (there was no illustration on this one, by the way) and copied down the definition in her best handwriting.

The whole of everything that exists, including the earth, moon, sun, all the planets, and all the stars.

I talked a little about how no one knows how big the universe is, and many people think it's expanding. All that we can see with even the most powerful telescopes is still just the tiniest fraction of the universe. As she began to draw, she stopped and pondered for a while. Then she said this.

Mom, I think the universe is God's mind. The universe keeps getting bigger because God's mind keeps getting bigger. I think when someone dies, she's still in the universe, because she's still in God's mind.

Blew. Me. Away.