Questioning Faith

I always find it exciting when topics in one class overlap or become apparent in another. This has occurred for me a lot this year between our class, TE 448, and my poetry class TE491. Recently in our class we read the book Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman in which, main character, Justine questions her Jewish faith and attempts to convert to Catholicism. Tonight, my other class TE 491, held a poetry “concert” Trillium. One of the presenters was a young girl who was a junior at Eastern High School. For an art class she was instructed to write a poem and create a piece of artwork to accompany it. She chose to present both her poem and art at Trillium. Within her artwork was a collage of symbols and pictures that she drew. However, the most predominant ones were a drawing of a cross, representing Christianity, and a Star of David representing Judaism. When asked to further discuss why she drew what she did, the young girl spoke to us briefly about her struggle in what faith she believes in.

This not only captured my attention because of our class session focusing around this issue, but also due to a question I posed during our class. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the book I was unsure as to if a child who was twelve years old would go as far as to question his/her faith. This question was answered and reinforced through the simple presentation given by the young girl from Eastern High School.