"Mister God, this is Anna" (Fynn)

"The diffrense from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside." These are the words of six-year-old Anna, sometimes called Mouse, Hum or Joy. At five years Anna knew absolutely the purpose of being, knew the meaning of love and was a personal friend and helper of Mister God. At six Anna was a theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet and gardener."

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"After the evening meal was finished and all the bits and pieces put away Anna and I would settle down to some activity, generally of her choosing. Fairy stories were dismissed as mere pretend stories; living was real and living was interesting and by and large fun. Reading the Bible wasn't a great success. She tended to regard it as a primer strictly for infants. The message of the Bible was simple and any half-wit could grasp it in thirty minutes flat! Religion was for doing things, not for reading about doing things. Once you had got the message there wasn't much point in going over and over the same old ground. Our local parson was taken aback when he asked her about God. The conversation went as follows:

"Do you believe in God?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what God is?"
"Yes."
"What is God then?"
"He's God!"
"Do you go to church?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I know it all!"
"What do you know?"
"I know to love Mister God and to love people and cats and dogs and spiders and flowers and trees", and the catalogue went on, "- with all of me."

Carol grinned at me and Stan made a face and I hurriedly put a cigarette into my mouth and indulged in a bout of coughing. There's nothing much you can do in the face of that kind of accusation, for that's what it amounted to.

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