God, Children, Priorities
I am getting over a week-long illness that literally knocked my breath out of me. It was by far the sickest I’ve ever been, with the exception of an operation I had in college, and it came about a week after almost all of my friends or their children had been sick, a week of providing dinners and babysitting and other kinds of help. Of course, as always, that help came back to me tenfold when it was my turn. I am back to work now, almost completely well, thanks in part at least to the love everybody showed me this past week.
Finally feeling better enough to be back to something resembling a normal routine, I read the week’s Bible passages this morning. The gospel reading reminds us, among other things, that whoever welcomes a child into her life welcomes God. On that note, I have three stories that I will just leave here, not bothering to interpret them, except to say that they are wonderful testaments of God working in our lives through children:
I am lucky to have many little people in my life, including two sisters that remind me a great deal of my sister and I at their age—a 5-year-old watchful, quiet, but confident girl who is classically pretty, as the photos and stories show I was as a kid, and her 3-year-old sister, who is cute, expressive, loves to show off, but will become suddenly timid if too many people are watching her—the way I remember my sister as a toddler. Their parents, who are friends of mine, have always been very clear with them about the fact that girls can marry girls or boys, and that my ex and I were married just like their father and mother were married. I have wondered whether and how my friends have explained our break up to their daughters, but I have never asked.
My friend called me this week with this story. She was a little hesitant to tell me about it, knowing it would make me sad, but she said, “It was just such a perfect moment, I couldn’t keep it from you.” Apparently, the 3-year-old realized recently that my partner and I were no longer living together. She asked her mother why, and her mother said, “They decided not to live together anymore.” The little girl said, “But I want them to live together!” Her mother said, “Well, they decided that wasn’t the best thing.” She said, “But I want to make cookies at their house!” Her mother promised her that she could still make cookies with each of us at our separate houses, and she dropped the subject. It has been more than a year since we made cookies together—at the time, she was only two, and could barely get the sprinkles on the cookies—but apparently, she remembers the day.
One of my babysitting gigs this past week was for my friend’s two little girls, 1 ½ and 4. We had a great afternoon playing in the yard and baking. On our way back to their house down the block, it began to sprinkle. The four-year-old pointed to the street and said, “Isn’t that funny? The street looks like a dog’s back, except that it’s hard instead of soft, and we're riding it.” I looked down, and she was right—I could see how the slight curve of the road where we were standing and the dark drops of water on the gray cement looked exactly like a dog’s back.
And, finally, one of my little 4-year-old friends spent a couple nights in the hospital due to a breathing problem suspiciously similar to mine this week. I watched his 2 ½-year-old and 6-month-old brothers while his parents went to the hospital on his last day there to meet with the doctor about checking him out. I bounced the baby on my knee while his brother climbed onto the couch and jumped off over and over, his diaper hanging half off his butt. I would have stopped him (and eventually did manage to change the diaper), except his parents, my friends, are exactly the kind of parents I hope I’ll be, layed back about the little things that most parents would be uptight about (they have to be this way—they have three boys under 5!) When the 4-year-old came home, he ran into the house and straight for the baby. I was a little startled, and, on instinct, pulled the baby away from him and said, “Be gentle!” But he put his hands on the baby’s cheeks and leaned in and kissed his nose and said, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” Then the middle brother joined in the chorus—“Hi, hi, hi!” he said—and ran over to me and the baby, too, squeezing in and throwing his arms around both of his brothers. I waited for the baby to scream, but when he didn’t, I relaxed and leaned in and pulled all three kids into my lap. When we all disconnected from the hug, the baby was smiling from ear to ear.
I am reminded of two stories Kathleen Norris tells in her book _Dakota_, which has had a huge influence on my life. In one, a little girl she meets during one of her visiting writer gigs on the Dakota prairie writes, “When my third snail died, I said,/ ‘I’m through with snails.’/ But I didn’t mean it.” In the other story, a little girl handed Norris a drawing of a whale with the sentence, “God is love.” At that time, Norris had been dreaming of a monster-God in the form of a whale, and she was a bit startled by the connection. “I just love that whale,” the little girl had said dreamily.
Images are powerful and communal but also intensely personal—as are losses and reunions and memories. Adults can’t encounter their lives as children, but we might benefit from pulling back once in awhile and seeing what is in front of us in the way a child would see it—life goes on (we can make cookies anyway); it is easier to move forward than we think if we see our movement through lenses of creativity (the road becomes a dog’s back, and we are riding it); there is pure joy in being well and alive and together.
During one of my feverish dreams this week, I worried about all the work I needed to do, everything I was missing by being sick. I was awake and asleep all at once, nervous and irritated and frustrated at how hard it was to breathe.
And then I fell all the way asleep—or perhaps woke up all the way in a way we are usually not awake—and my mother, who has been dead for more than 20 years, was standing in front of me, handing me a colorful spiral that had been drawn by a child and was, as she said, “the answer you are looking for.”
I took the spiral in my hands. It was a kind of hierarchy, living, breathing, moving—the Divine was the outer circle, sea-blue, and beneath it was my health, and beneath that, my friends and family. Beneath that were the words “community/justice” in bright yellow, and then there was white space in the middle of the circle with child drawings of simple things like flowers and rainbows and hearts floating in the white. At the bottom, there was the word “job.”
“But this isn’t an order that makes sense,” I told my mother urgently, and she said,
“Everything is connected to everything else. Your job is only important in that it girds up the other things.”
I woke up and dragged myself to my writing desk and drew what I remembered of this spiral using Crayola markers I have secretly stashed in a drawer. When I finished, I realized the drawing was eerily just like what I’d dreamed, and that, of course, my mother was right. I am lucky to have a job that does connect me to my experience of the divine, that involves meaningful relationships and allows me to work for justice—but it is only important insofar as it supports the fully tapestry of my life. When it impedes my connection to the divine or my health or my relationships or my justice-seeking, then the balance is off.
But I digress. I added this story not because I wanted to delve into the spiral itself, an image which I will no doubt contemplate for a long time, but because I am touched by how simply it was created and recreated using the tools a child would use. Perhaps God is most alive and clear in the heart of a child.
Well, that was more interpretation than I’d meant to provide, and I hadn’t meant to include the dream here, or the spiral, without more reflection. But I have done what our little friend did on our walk home—named what I saw, risked being told it was nonsense.
Finally feeling better enough to be back to something resembling a normal routine, I read the week’s Bible passages this morning. The gospel reading reminds us, among other things, that whoever welcomes a child into her life welcomes God. On that note, I have three stories that I will just leave here, not bothering to interpret them, except to say that they are wonderful testaments of God working in our lives through children:
I am lucky to have many little people in my life, including two sisters that remind me a great deal of my sister and I at their age—a 5-year-old watchful, quiet, but confident girl who is classically pretty, as the photos and stories show I was as a kid, and her 3-year-old sister, who is cute, expressive, loves to show off, but will become suddenly timid if too many people are watching her—the way I remember my sister as a toddler. Their parents, who are friends of mine, have always been very clear with them about the fact that girls can marry girls or boys, and that my ex and I were married just like their father and mother were married. I have wondered whether and how my friends have explained our break up to their daughters, but I have never asked.
My friend called me this week with this story. She was a little hesitant to tell me about it, knowing it would make me sad, but she said, “It was just such a perfect moment, I couldn’t keep it from you.” Apparently, the 3-year-old realized recently that my partner and I were no longer living together. She asked her mother why, and her mother said, “They decided not to live together anymore.” The little girl said, “But I want them to live together!” Her mother said, “Well, they decided that wasn’t the best thing.” She said, “But I want to make cookies at their house!” Her mother promised her that she could still make cookies with each of us at our separate houses, and she dropped the subject. It has been more than a year since we made cookies together—at the time, she was only two, and could barely get the sprinkles on the cookies—but apparently, she remembers the day.
One of my babysitting gigs this past week was for my friend’s two little girls, 1 ½ and 4. We had a great afternoon playing in the yard and baking. On our way back to their house down the block, it began to sprinkle. The four-year-old pointed to the street and said, “Isn’t that funny? The street looks like a dog’s back, except that it’s hard instead of soft, and we're riding it.” I looked down, and she was right—I could see how the slight curve of the road where we were standing and the dark drops of water on the gray cement looked exactly like a dog’s back.
And, finally, one of my little 4-year-old friends spent a couple nights in the hospital due to a breathing problem suspiciously similar to mine this week. I watched his 2 ½-year-old and 6-month-old brothers while his parents went to the hospital on his last day there to meet with the doctor about checking him out. I bounced the baby on my knee while his brother climbed onto the couch and jumped off over and over, his diaper hanging half off his butt. I would have stopped him (and eventually did manage to change the diaper), except his parents, my friends, are exactly the kind of parents I hope I’ll be, layed back about the little things that most parents would be uptight about (they have to be this way—they have three boys under 5!) When the 4-year-old came home, he ran into the house and straight for the baby. I was a little startled, and, on instinct, pulled the baby away from him and said, “Be gentle!” But he put his hands on the baby’s cheeks and leaned in and kissed his nose and said, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” Then the middle brother joined in the chorus—“Hi, hi, hi!” he said—and ran over to me and the baby, too, squeezing in and throwing his arms around both of his brothers. I waited for the baby to scream, but when he didn’t, I relaxed and leaned in and pulled all three kids into my lap. When we all disconnected from the hug, the baby was smiling from ear to ear.
I am reminded of two stories Kathleen Norris tells in her book _Dakota_, which has had a huge influence on my life. In one, a little girl she meets during one of her visiting writer gigs on the Dakota prairie writes, “When my third snail died, I said,/ ‘I’m through with snails.’/ But I didn’t mean it.” In the other story, a little girl handed Norris a drawing of a whale with the sentence, “God is love.” At that time, Norris had been dreaming of a monster-God in the form of a whale, and she was a bit startled by the connection. “I just love that whale,” the little girl had said dreamily.
Images are powerful and communal but also intensely personal—as are losses and reunions and memories. Adults can’t encounter their lives as children, but we might benefit from pulling back once in awhile and seeing what is in front of us in the way a child would see it—life goes on (we can make cookies anyway); it is easier to move forward than we think if we see our movement through lenses of creativity (the road becomes a dog’s back, and we are riding it); there is pure joy in being well and alive and together.
During one of my feverish dreams this week, I worried about all the work I needed to do, everything I was missing by being sick. I was awake and asleep all at once, nervous and irritated and frustrated at how hard it was to breathe.
And then I fell all the way asleep—or perhaps woke up all the way in a way we are usually not awake—and my mother, who has been dead for more than 20 years, was standing in front of me, handing me a colorful spiral that had been drawn by a child and was, as she said, “the answer you are looking for.”
I took the spiral in my hands. It was a kind of hierarchy, living, breathing, moving—the Divine was the outer circle, sea-blue, and beneath it was my health, and beneath that, my friends and family. Beneath that were the words “community/justice” in bright yellow, and then there was white space in the middle of the circle with child drawings of simple things like flowers and rainbows and hearts floating in the white. At the bottom, there was the word “job.”
“But this isn’t an order that makes sense,” I told my mother urgently, and she said,
“Everything is connected to everything else. Your job is only important in that it girds up the other things.”
I woke up and dragged myself to my writing desk and drew what I remembered of this spiral using Crayola markers I have secretly stashed in a drawer. When I finished, I realized the drawing was eerily just like what I’d dreamed, and that, of course, my mother was right. I am lucky to have a job that does connect me to my experience of the divine, that involves meaningful relationships and allows me to work for justice—but it is only important insofar as it supports the fully tapestry of my life. When it impedes my connection to the divine or my health or my relationships or my justice-seeking, then the balance is off.
But I digress. I added this story not because I wanted to delve into the spiral itself, an image which I will no doubt contemplate for a long time, but because I am touched by how simply it was created and recreated using the tools a child would use. Perhaps God is most alive and clear in the heart of a child.
Well, that was more interpretation than I’d meant to provide, and I hadn’t meant to include the dream here, or the spiral, without more reflection. But I have done what our little friend did on our walk home—named what I saw, risked being told it was nonsense.
Comments