I’m working through Robert Coles’s book The Spiritual Lives of Children. Coles is well known for his ground breaking psychological work with young children from various cultures (during the Civil Rights era) as well as serving as a professor at Harvard University.

I first learned about Coles through other writers who constantly referenced his life and work. I’m just now getting to his work first hand. Incredibly detailed, thoughtful, and careful–Spiritual Lives seeks to see the inner world of children and their imagination is it relates to faith, God, and spirituality.

Coles resist presenting pithy anecdotes or simplistic summaries. Instead, Coles carefully works through children’s perceptions of God in (primarily but not limited to) the three major religions of the West: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The chapter entitled “Visionary Moments” will leave you speechless. The chapter “Jewish Righteousness” will give you a window into Judaism you will remember for a long time. The last chapter, “The Child as Pilgrim”, will help you view your own life in a new and fresh way. In Chesterton-like language, Coles writes:

“So it is we connect with each other, move in and out of one another’s lives, teach and heal and affirm one another, across space and time–all of us wanderers, explorers, adventurers, stragglers and ramblers, sometimes tramps or vagabonds, even fugitives, but now and then pilgrims; as children, as parents, as old ones about to take that final step, to enter that territory whose character none of us here ever know. Yet how young we are when we start wondering about it all, the nature of the journey and of the final destination,” (335).

Here are a few memorable lines: (on heaven) “The Lord will be a real big man.” God is a “companion who won’t leave.” Regarding God’s providence, “God is my parents’ parent and mine too.” Or, my personal favorite (on salvation), ” . . . we are all hoping, God is always wanting.”