“I want to be a child climbing trees somewhere, breathing in the fresh, outside air, before I knew this life was unkind.” These are the lyrics from a song written by a current folk singer/songwriter. My heart was struck with sorrow and longing on hearing these lyrics. I think they cut to the core of who we are, and for whom we were made.
The first lines evoke a child-like experience of this world that God created. The experience of beauty, freedom, and adventure. John Senior, a Catholic educator and writer, said that we have a pre-rational experience of faith in encountering creation. We experience God first in our hearts, before sorting through it in our heads. When we experience the stars, God speaks to our hearts in that silent encounter. The soul’s reception of reality. No analysis needed. While stargazing one night I remember my son saying, “I feel so small.” Yes! That’s it! That’s the start of reality. How small. Miniscule in comparison to this vast expanse of creation. And yet his interior, my interior, is infinite! It is larger than the universe that he is taking in at that very moment. How strange and mysterious.
We carry these experiences deep down, but then bump into the second half of the verse – the unkindness of life. “Before I knew this life was unkind.” Before I “grew up.” Before I became hardened by the beatings that life has to offer. The tender heart, which has built walls over the years to protect itself from the pain of this valley of tears. How am I to reconcile this? Beauty, freedom, and suffering.
My first thought is that I don’t have time for this sort of questioning – I’m a dad with a bunch of kids. A house, animals, responsibilities. A lawn to mow! I don’t have time to even think about this… But then the stars. ahh. How little I am again! Here I am Lord. The experience frees me from so many deceptions – that I’m too busy to ask these questions; I have too many things on my to-do list. These questions matter. And they ought to be asked. They must be asked. What is this desire to be a child again? What is that, Lord? What am I really asking? Can I, can you, break down these barriers and expose this tender heart that longs to ask? Is this something that we should be about? And then this scripture verse comes to mind: Unless you become like little children…
Where do we start, Lord, this return to being child-like? John Senior remarked that God wrote two books – The book of creation and the book of the Bible: and we must get the first one right in order to understand the second. So what does the first book offer us? Creation teaches us how little we are, and how big God is. How good God is. How He creates beauty, and how we were made for this beauty. The experience of creation expands our souls, especially stargazing. It also causes us to bump up against the hard edges of reality. The world doesn’t bend to us and our whims. Rather, we are, or ought to be, shaped by it.
What about the second book? That one teaches about the unkindness of life, and how to understand it. The mystery of iniquity. Original sin which created this discord, and is part of each one of our stories. And then it tells us about the Creator’s great rescue mission – to restore these hearts of stone: to recreate hearts of flesh. The hearts of children that know and trust in their Father and His love. The world grounds us in the goodness of God, and the scriptures tell us the story. The story, as one Scripture scholar put it, of a Father who lost His children and would do anything to get them back.
Can I be a child again? Yes. Behold the stars and be held by the truth.
