The Gift and Joy of Children

 The Gift and Joy of Children

After my mom remarried in 1956 we moved to Toronto where my step-father worked for the Weston Biscuit Company, Canada’s answer to Nabisco. There, I attended a little mission church called St. Richard of Chichester. Because, even then I sought to be ordained, Fr Hall allowed me to teach Sunday school. Second grade was my favorite. Their minds full of wonder I’d engage them with fanciful stories and tales and not just biblical ones. I’d make them up as I went. 

One day I happened upon a caterpillar on the way to church and brought the little centipede to class. I shared the experience of allowing the little one to climb all over my hand and held the children in awe. Then one by one, those who wished were allowed to experience the magic of that creepy crawly thing to roam about their hands. To round out the wonder of it all I asked the children to imagine that one day this little one would be a magnificent butterfly. 

Then I proceeded to tell the story of the early church and how it used the butterfly to tell of Jesus’ resurrection. I told the children that one day they too would turn into something beautiful for God; something like a butterfly from the creepy crawly caterpillars they were today. We all laughed. 

Being a child with children is a pure delight. 

In College I lived with a family who had two young children and partly paid my room and board in exchange for babysitting. Again I told bed time stories. I’d make up something as I went along. J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling had nothing on me. And just this week I spent a delightful evening with Sara Mato from St Paul’s and her two children with Bob and Anne Barney, thank you very much. I fancy myself a bit of a lovable grandpa. This is how Sara’s children see me. And Cindy is grandma.

The gift of children. The joy and care of children as the Prayer Book puts it. How precious!

All of which makes the events of this past week unbearably and exquisitely excruciating in sorrow and pain. And yet I feel as though I am silenced from what I want to say. So politicized is everything that anything I might want to say will likely be characterized as “political”. And politics should be kept out of the pulpit.

So, I’ll hold my tongue. I will bottle up the pain within me. I will keep a silence. But as I do that, the children’s screams cry out to me from somewhere beyond the grave. In fact the voices are clearly recorded; “Please send the police” a child begs. 

An hour passes before the police breached the barricades.

If it were up to me I’d lock up gun control advocates and NRA leaders into the same room with the children’s voices. I wouldn’t let them out until they agree on something. But I have to hush my mouth. I have nothing to say. I don’t want to be political. 

But I do have to be prophetic. That’s why I ask us to listen to the voice of Jesus. In today’s Gospel; Jesus prayed to God; “that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one”.

I have no voice. No opinion. I have nothing to say. But the children’s voices are haunting me with their screams. They are the prophets now and I will let them speak for me. 

We are told that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. Why then did the good guys with guns wait so long?

Alas I have to learn to hold my tongue. 

Maybe Congress can come up with something this time!

Hold your tongue, Bresnahan.

When our children were little, I told them the tales of Fern Hollow, this wonderful fanciful place of thatched cottages in a pastoral setting in a lovely little village.Various and sundry barnyard animals held forth in their homely adventures. 

No longer can I protect my children and provide for them a safe, warm, and affectionate home. All that is gone now. 

I have nothing more to say. 

I must keep a holy silence.

The pain will not go away.

Jesus I pray to you for the children. Make us one that we may protect them. 

“Almighty God, heavenly Father, you have blessed us with the joy and care of children: Give us calm strength and patient wisdom as we nurture and protect them. Give us Grace that we may teach them to love whatever is just and true and good, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

A Dialogue

Now, Jesus is glaring at me. 

“Don’t just sit there praying to me while the children die.

Do something!”

“Do what? Anything I do would be political.”

Jesus is increasingly impatient. 

“Am I not the Good Shepherd. 

Did I not lay down my life for the sheep.

What about you?

What about my children?

Did I not say ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’.

Did you not teach that song to the children when you taught Sunday school?”

“But they keep telling me that guns are not the problem.

These are people I love.

What do I say?

Anything I say will be heard as political.

I just don’t know what to say or what to do.”

“Tell the Truth.” ~Ephesians 4:15

“I did that. They will not listen.

Remember what they did to you Jesus when you told the Truth.”

“I know.

Did that stop me?”

“All right you dragged it out of me. Let the chips fall where they may. Here’s the Truth as I see it. ‘A well regulated militia’ as the Second Amendment says would be one in which guns would be registered, gun owners licensed and insured, based on universal background checks.”

“But my loved ones say that guns are not the problem. Mental Health is. We need to arm teachers.” 

“You see, Jesus we are a ‘house divided’~Matthew 12:25 and as you wrote in the scriptures so many years ago. Such a house cannot stand.”

“All right. Start there. That’s the truth. Now ‘Come let us reason together’~Isaiah 1:18. “It is written.”

In the Name of God the Most Holy, Undivided and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul