From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:
Sunday, I wish I liked Sunday School as much as I like Dancing School, but I don’t. The songs they sing there are ugly sounding, not in English, and I can’t understand what they are about, and the stories seem so silly to me. When I tell the teacher I can’t understand, she just says that I will when I am older. I don’t really want to wait that long, but I can’t help but wonder why there is so much confusion and mystery. If God loves everyone just the same, why does he call the Jews his chosen people, and what are we chosen for? Why did he choose them? At lunch today, I did not want to eat my soup, and Alma said it was all right, if I ate all the rest of the lunch. She was so kind, and while eating dessert of bread pudding with lots of raisins and cream, she read me a poem. It was so much more beautiful than anything I had learned in Sunday School. After lunch, I asked her to read it to me again, and I tried to remember it all, but I couldn’t, and Alma said to just try to remember two lines for a little while and then try to learn the rest.
These are the lines…
“He prayeth best who loveth best all things great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all.”That doesn’t say anything about choosing anybody. When I go to bed tonight, I want to say my prayers on my knees like the little girl in the picture over my bed. She has long, golden curls, and a blue nightgown and a red rose in her hair, and she is so beautiful that God must love her very much.
The quotation is from one of the last stanzas of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wikipedia explains the stanza: “As penance for shooting the albatross, the mariner, driven by the agony of his guilt, is now forced to wander the earth, telling his story over and over, and teaching a lesson to those he meets.”