The World According to Kieran (and Pixar)

Church is always a challenge with Kieran. To keep him well behaved, we usually play a type of "I Spy" game during sacrament meeting as part of our entertainment repetoire. Our new chapel is great for this game. It's the most ornate Mormon chapel--or temple, for that matter--that I've ever seen. It's a white, mosque-looking building that was dedicated in 1930 by then prophet, Heber J. Grant. The chapel is filled with stain glass windows. One window depicts a picture of Christ holding a lantern and knocking at a door. During the sacrament today, I asked Kieran if he could find the picture of Jesus, which he did. I asked him what Jesus was doing, and he said that he was knocking on a door. Since I need to make the game last as long as possible, I then asked him what Jesus was holding in his hand. He told me very matter-of-factly that Jesus was holding "the Ghostlight." To those of you who haven't watched the movie Cars and all its special features innumerable times, the ghostlight is a lantern the other characters use to scare the tow-truck, Mater. Who knew that the ghostlight had its beginning in the Bible!

This isn't the first time Kieran's world has been shaped by Pixar and the likes. We visited the La Brea tar pits a couple of weeks ago, which is just that. A tar pit. In the middle of Los Angeles. Thousands of ice-age fossils have been recovered from the pits and are displayed in a museum near the pits. While going through the museum, Kieran insisted on calling every wooly mammoth "Anny" after Manny in Ice Age, and every sabre tooth tiger he calls Diego. Now, all elephants are also called Anny, and anything even resembling a cat is called Diego. It's no use trying to correct him. Apparently, Pixar knows better than mommy.