12-28-23 - Becoming Children

You can listen to this reflection here.

Some say that Christmas is for children; as we age the anticipation dims, the mystery dissipates. We affirm with our minds what all the fuss is about, but we also know it will come around again. I was already a little jaded by college, writing in my journal, “I can’t get more excited about Christ being born just because the calendar says December 25th than I am the other 364 days of the year.”

But for children, Christmas is often a heightened time - the growing pile of presents under the tree, the dazzling ornaments, special treats baked only once a year, dressing up and staying up, the pageant and the carols. I remember Christmas; what would it be like to feel that wonder again?

Jesus said we had to become like children to receive the kingdom of God. In the prologue to John’s Gospel, which we’re exploring this week, we learn how that happens: But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Power to become children of God – what an interesting phrase. We don’t always associate power with childhood. And who can get themselves born, especially by the will of God? That is something over which we have no power whatsoever. And yet that is the paradox of faith – when we exercise our will to believe in Christ, by faith, not sight, we receive power to give our power away. When we give our power away in vulnerability and trust (I’m not talking about when it’s taken by force…), we are more free to receive.

As I write about the wonder of childhood, I am reminded that today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which recalls the slaying of two-year-old boys in Judea at the order of a paranoid King Herod (Matthew 2). It’s hard not to think of the children being killed, maimed or orphaned in Gaza or the Ukraine at present, or Israeli children who witnessed the massacres and kidnappings by Hamas on October 7. Childhood gives cause for wonderment of all sorts, not just beauty. But as children do, we can process death and tragedy within relationships of trust, such as God invites us into.

I pray for the grace to receive the gift of wonder and joy and openness available to children; adulthood isn’t always much fun. And maybe that’s the point – adulthood is where we live; childhood – in its best sense – is like that realm of God that coexists with this world. As we let our faith grow, we get to spend more time in that land of wonder, where things are always new again and mysteries present themselves for the unwrapping.

God has so many gifts for us; we need to receive them with hands outstretched like a child catching snowflakes.

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10-1-21 - Child's Eye View

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

There are exercises for training care-givers, to help them better understand the experience of given populations. People working with the sight-impaired don light-proof blindfolds and try to get around; people who serve the infirm are told to navigate spaces with canes or wheelchairs.

I don’t know if any such exercises exist to better understand the world as a child experiences it, but I wonder what we’d have to do to recover that way of seeing. Certainly we’d have to get several feet closer to the floor, and maybe be told to regard every object as a potential plaything, and be encouraged to ask every question that comes to mind.

As Jesus tells it, we need to be able to get back into our “child mind” if we want to be serious about our faith journey: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

This comment may well have shocked the serious adults to whom he addressed it. His own disciples had been busy shooing away the children who were crowding around Jesus, and he told them to let the children come. But to go further and say we need to emulate them if we want to enter the kingdom of God? That’s a radical notion.

That means we need to embrace dependency instead of going it alone. It means we are able to believe in things that we cannot see – and even see them, as our faith vision develops. It means we come to expect joy and playfulness, and strengthen our capacity for wonder. It means we ask our questions when we’re curious, and cry when we're sad, and act silly when something tickles us, and sit down for stories that capture our fancy. And we share these good things with each other.

How much of that applies to your experience of church and Christian community? How might we adapt our circumstances to foster this way of being?

I’ve been talking about how we might perceive the Kingdom as children do. But Jesus didn’t say “perceive,” he said “receive.” We must become receptors if we are to truly accept God’s gifts, even God’s calls to action. When working and giving outweigh receiving, we find ourselves stuck outside the threshold of God-Life, yearning to get in.

That’s kind of where those children were who wanted to get close to Jesus. And here’s what he did: And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
If we come to Him like that, he will offer us no less.

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