I couldn’t help recently but reflect on a dream I had. I was a child again. It seemed like I was in some Christmas store or even in the North Pole training camp with Santa as in those Xmas movies but yet felt vulnerable until I looked at a statute of Jesus and it seemed that power came all over me through my hand and I felt so empowered and almost somewhat overwhelmed and precocious.
It was amazing as I spent the next day reflecting and couldn’t stop looking at my hands. Anyway this was followed by a conversation with a very dear and special person to me who I connect with very well who asked me whether we will always remain vulnerable even as we grow older.
I am no psychologist but I have read that we all have an inner child. Carl Jung has written much on this, about the inner divine child in all of us, the source of our creativity, freshness, enthusiasm, eagerness to learn, curiousity with a zest for life.
That’s enough psychology. Now I get it. It is Christmas and the divine child is here. All eyes are on him yet he is vulnerable. The God who is love chooses to incarnate and has no place among men, not even an inn. A stable is chosen to welcome him. Animals give him a home. What an irony? So many lessons for us to learn only of we are willing and not too busy rushing.
The one who later will command the winds and the sea, perplex the crowds, cast out demons, heal the leper and restore sight to the blind; needs human protection. He will need Joseph and Mary. Mary for love and tenderness and Joseph for protection against those who are about to kill him in Herod. The one “through him all things were made” will need whom he “made” to keep him warm and safe. Ah the wisdom of God! It is subversive wisdom as Richard Rohr would say.
Dare I say as old as we get we need to still be like children but not in the sense of irresponsibility nor by repressing our inner child. We need to allow ourselves the time to play, laugh, smile, to be spontaneous and creative. We simply can’t always be tense, analytical and overly wise or too serious. It is amazing how many people associate holiness with a serious face. I know this firsthand from students who are into their faith more than your average teens, who continue to tell me that a particular teacher at our school cannot be holy because he laughs a lot and does not have a serious face like St Charbel. I am out if this case as well.
I know some may simply say just Grow up! Or that the problem is that too many people act like children and never become real men and women in taking responsibility. This may be the case but the experience of the great mystics especially my woman, St Therese of the Child Jesus calls us to remain little. The experience of those who work with elderly tells us that older people sometimes become like “children” as they reach the final phase of their lives.
We need to allow time for the inner child who refreshes us. How often we experience this inner child alive when we are around children no matter how old we are? It’s like children bring out our inner child to play. We need to encourage this.
It’s okay to allow ourselves to be children which always is a two-edged sword. If we have been hurt as children this can be challenging. We may need external professional help.
But either way tapping into my inner child means I will be vulnerable, open and in need. This is the great paradox. But for us as Christians we see this as the “good news” of Christmas. By being like children spiritually, we become vulnerable yes but in need of our heavenly Father. Here, we come to God for love and protection. “Unless you become like children you cannot enter the kingdom” is simply the case because if we are not children we will have no room for the divine. There will be no “need”, we become too self-sufficient, too “adult”, too isolated, too preoccupied to allow space for God.
Only in tapping into the inner child and in the Spirit of Christmas we will begin to value the “stone which builders rejected” which turns out to be the cornerstone and once more we begin to re-hear the words of Jesus to Nicodemus in a new light “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (Jn 3:3).
Merry Christmas to all!
Christ is Born! (3a2belna)
Burning Hearts 