Being a Child Again Makes You Better

We were very young when we married. 19 and 20. Like the Boss sang "for my ninetieth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat." But our lives were not a desperate '80s ballad. We had help and compassion. We were young parents; but we we're not alone.

              At our church, we were a bit of an oddity.  In terms of age we were part of the young adults.  But the other young adults were not married with a child.  And the other cohort, the young families, we were a fit, but an awkward one.

              Standing by the pool of the associate pastor's house, beer in hand, I felt very grown up with the other young fathers.  They were discussing mortgages. Refinancing mortgages.  It was time to refinance, time to secure a lower interest rate.  I listened and sipped my beer.  Didn't offer an opinion; wasn't asked for one.  On the drive home I told Kathy.  We need to get a mortgage.  Not sure what it is. But everyone has one.  We should get one. 

              Becoming a parent, no matter your age, is confusing, sometimes frightening.  Many people describe the panic of walking out of the hospital with a newborn.  What if something goes wrong?  Wouldn’t it better to stay in a place filled with medical professionals and equipment just in case. 

              Like any profound change in life you can feel a bit of a fraud.  Who in their right mind believes you can raise a child?  You are a child.  Perhaps this question surfaced being so young.  In a doctor’s visit for our newborn the nurse came to the door and said, “Mr. Garry.”  I looked around for my father, thinking, what is he doing here.  And then it dawned on me, ready or not, you are Mr. Garry.

              I did a children’s sermon once where I took a potted plant and asked the children to shout at the plant with me.  We were to shout, grow, grow up, come on grow.  We did this three times.  After each round of yelling we would check the plant to see if it was bigger.  After the third round one of the children said, “this is not how it works.”  When I asked how it works, they all offered insights from their agrarian experience.  Water, soil, light. 

              After we determined how plants grow, I asked them about our growth, how do we grow, grow up.  The moral of the story was: shouting doesn’t work on us either.  Before they reached the conclusion, though, they offered examples of what might help them grow up.  Love, parents, teachers, church.  I asked about a good diet, but they were too smart and knew this was a trap so to eat unwanted vegetables. Growth, though, for them seemed inevitable.

              When children are young, especially in the sweet spot of five-to-eight years of age, when children are young, we gasp at how fast they change and grow up.  The innocent, the sweet, those who still need to hold our hand, they grow up all too soon.  And for the most part they simply mature.  They become not only bigger, but smarter, savvy even.  Maturity is not as guaranteed as height or grade school maturation.  But it happens.  Sitting in the waiting room with our child recognizing the change coming over me I could sense the growth.  I was not a child anymore.

              When I consider the path of maturity, I often remember making toast.  My sixth-grade teacher, Dory Stewart, was a wild redheaded moo moo wearing woman bedecked with lots of costume jewelry and turquoise.  She was one of those teachers no box would ever contain.  I imagine the toaster in the back of her room with the bread and butter and the peanut butter was for children who didn't get breakfast, a kind of head start satellite program. The rule of her room was you could make toast if you wanted to make toast.  Just get your work done first.

              I made a lot of toast.  Not because I was hungry.  I made a lot of toast because the making of it gave me power.  I felt empowered by the creation of toast.  There was an element of self-reliance worthy of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the application of butter and peanut butter because I was the actor, the definer of my fate and fortune.  It was my intent, for all intents and purposes.

              Although not many make their way with a toaster, the path to the moment of courage and becoming a person is a beautiful thing.  To live unto the moment where you find your way, your voice, your heart.  To know and to live love is the essence of our humanity, the true will of God.  All would be saved, all would be redeemed, live unto a mature joy, a deep faith, a beautiful soul. 

              Such is the intent of Paul's poem read so often at weddings.  It could be Paul's letter is read so often at weddings because there is so little of the bible likely to be heard as appropriate at such a moment.  The bible, for the most part, describes us at our worst, our failures and violence.  No matter how small or large a wedding service there is a common ground of tenderness and elegance and purity of intent.  Not a lot of bible passages have these themes.

              But 1Corinthians does.  And to Paul's credit or to ours, in a wedding we can see the key to love's maturity.  You need someone, or in the words of Jefferson Airplane, you really need somebody to love.  Love is patient and kind, love isn't arrogant boastful or rude, love doesn't insist on its own way.  Love hopes all things believes all things.  Love never ends.  Together, with somebody to love, we lay aside childish ways, we grow up.  We speak with a mature voice; we offer our life to others with understanding and intent.  Hence, we ask those who are to be wed, is this your intent. If so please say, I do.  I do so intend to love this one.  

              When I met Ralph and Eva Hecker they were near the end of their life.  In their early nineties, they had been married more than 70 years.  As a young pastor just out of seminary I was dumbfounded by this, trying to imagine not only 90 years but also 70 years of marriage.  Having not yet reached a decade of anniversaries, I just could not imagine the unfolding of their life.  What does the world look like to them? 

              Two things were helpful.  During WWII, Ralph went to the Pacific from San Diego.  Eva moved there from Ohio to be with him.  Forty years later Kathy and I would live in the same neighborhood.  We knew the same streets, same canyons.  It was a strange connection.  The second help was how much they kibbitzed.  It wasn't so much bickering, but banter.  Be it the right telling of a story or who was going to answer the telephone, they were feisty.  It was as if they were teenagers still.

              Ralph and Eva helped me grasp the contradiction in our readings today.  Paul says, grow up.  Ready or not you need to mature, become a human being capable of wisdom and compassion and love.  Jesus says, if you don't come to the kingdom of God as a child, you can't go in.  Paul teaches maturity; Jesus seems to beg we remain a child, immature.  Let the children come unto me.

              Ralph and Eva were children, very old children, but love, the life they shared, allowed them all the possibilities of a mature and empowered life, and at the same time a place of wonder and awe and tenderness.  They were certainly of an adult age, but they possessed a child's heart, a delight. 

              Kathy and I just watched the television show, The Pitt.  Hard show to watch.  As one character describes their work in a trauma center emergency room: we get to save people, but we also must be with them on the worst day of their life.  Each hour of the show is a rollercoaster of victory and tragedy.  As will happen in such a production, each character has a role to play, a voice to add to the story's unfolding.  There is one character, though, who stands out, whose role rises above the rest. 

              Dr. Trinity Santos is wicked smart, brash, pushy, arrogant, a rude young woman.  She is just as likely to cut you with her wit than with a scalpel.  Yet, the true force of her voice is how incapable she is of love, especially to be loved.  After one scene I turned to Kathy and said, "why is it so hard to be loved?  Why is this so hard?"

              I have no idea how the writers of this television show will answer this question, but it is the question they have created in the character of Trinity.  Why is love so hard? 

              In our two readings today, the contradiction can be naivete and maturity, adolescence and adulthood.  It could be.  And it could be developmental. You enter as a child, but then you must grow up.  Possible.  Not very profound, but possible.

              For me our two readings find a powerful complement if we see them as a long conversation, like Ralph and Eva, a long kibbitzing and feistiness.  Most importantly, the idea of never being done.  Sitting with them, there was never a sense of ending.  They just moved slower.

              Ready or not we have to face the challenges life brings.  We need to grow up and keep growing up with courage and modesty and kindness.  This is what it means to be good, to be true, to live a beautiful life.  What if the facing of life's challenges is more than endurance, more than simply getting through the hard times?  What if, we are to grow up, to mature in faith and hope and love, so we are no longer afraid, no longer struggle with love?

              I see this when I try to imagine the unfolding narrative of Trinity Santos, the young doctor who cannot be loved.  When I try imagining her life, I hope, I look for a healing, a restoration of her soul so she can love and be loved.  I imagine her as a child extending a hand to be held in the way a young boy or girl reaches out to the ones who cherish them. 

              Life doesn't always end in victory.  Not everyone finds maturity and freedom.  This is true. Some never find the ease of being loved.  This is the essence of tragedy; life lived with less than the full measure of love every soul needs and must find.

              I made a lot of toast.  I did.  And I have had a couple mortgages, even refinanced one with a better interest rate.  I struggled just as much being called Reverend Garry as did being called Mr. Garry.  Life has come and life has gone.  I am not sure how mature I have become. I am still in some ways with Dory Stewart and her wild hair, I am still with her because I want to enter the kingdom of God as a child, in the purity of heart, and the readiness to love and be loved. 

              I pray for you a feistiness of spirit, like Ralph and Eva.  I pray you find freedom from all fear; I pray the voice of fear, the voice where we pull back our hand, the hand of a child reaching out, I pray those voices flee far from you, leave your heart forever.  We must mature, grow, grow old. But mostly we must grow to love and seek love as a child does.  In this we are ever being born anew, ever a child again being drawn to God.  This is an endless path, for love never ends.  Amen.