"Life Is Like A Toilet."

So said my six-year-old son yesterday. He has dreams of becoming a writer when he grows up, and he's pretty good at ferreting out spiritual truths from everyday things.

For example, on Easter Sunday, he informed us that Easter eggs are a reminder of Easter because you open up the egg and take out the candy, which makes it empty inside, just like the tomb was when Jesus rose from the dead.

However, he uncorked a couple of beauts last night. As we drove home from an outing, he said that "Life is like a toilet. When you get all dirty and yucky, you flush the toilet and it all comes back clean. So if you are feeling meanness, you have to flush the toilet and get rid of the meanness and then it will come back as kindness."

I think he meant something about prayer in the middle of that there.

Number two (pardon the pun): My eight-year-old daughter had a compass last night, and she asked me how it worked. So I showed the kids, and then Noah pulls out: "God is like a compass. He shows you the right way you should go."

"Yeah," I said, "you're right. If you ever feel anger or meanness, you can ask God how you should act and he'll show you which way to go."

"Yeah," he said. "But what if someone keeps hitting you in the face with a dodge ball?"

I stifled a smile. "I guess you should just pray and ask God what direction you should go."

"I just walked away," he said.

Uh oh. So he wasn't being silly with the question. I asked him what was up, and he told me that a couple of kids at a birthday party he'd attended earlier had decided to pick on him during a dodge ball game. When he walked away (a move for which I heaped hearty praise on him), they followed him out of the dodge ball pavilion and kept trying to peg him with the balls (for which they were chastised by adults present).

"Why do you think those guys were picking on you, Noah?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, flicking his hair out of his face with a quick jerk of his head. "Probably because of my smooth moves."