WINDOW-ON-THE-WORLD

Moving Van, Chicago, IL

While staying with my one-year old grandson during the day recently, I realized how out of touch I had become when it comes to having the curiosity and imagination of a child.  Jesus remarked in Matthew 18:3-4 “Truly I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”  We adults have lived long enough to have accumulated and be blinded by all the biases and lenses through which we filter the world around us.  It was a renewal of spirit to once again see the world through the lens of a little child.

We literally spent off and on hours with two cut-out books that had successively larger holes for truck wheels and fish.  The Zoom truck book has already received so much attention that the spine has separated from its moorings.  But that wasn’t a result of repeated readings.  No, this spineless book has been through an unlimited number of passing’s of small trucks through the one page where cutout wheels are big enough for the drill.  Of course, that’s not the book’s intended purpose, but one that has already claimed its destiny in this life.

And just when you think that the game is over, a screeching ambulance, a large white delivery truck, a noisy sports car, or a bright yellow school bus interrupts the silence of the third-floor unit in the Chicago Greystone and we rush to our window-on-the-world just in time to catch a glimpse of the passing vehicle below amid the wondrous verbalizing of the language of a young child’s “Oooooooo’s”.  That reality sparks renewed interest in once again passing the miniature trucks through the magical portals to a new dimension!  These traits will serve him well as his window-on-the-world begins to expand exponentially.

Soon a moving van realizes that it has just entered a one-way street going the wrong way.  So, it turns into the alley below and maneuvers around as electronic back up signals sound the alarm.  The urgent sound immediately brings us back to the window sill so that the entire episode can be absorbed.  And then just as the street traffic seems to settle down, a city trash truck can be heard digesting the cast-off waste of the big city dwellers before it continues on its never-ending mission to our eternal childlike delight. 

ENCOURAGERS WANTED

Childlike Love, Chicago, IL

I recently ran across a message on the Internet from “the world” that advertised for encouragers, explaining that we already had enough critics, thank you. Much of the world and I have seen a lot of encouragement from Pope Francis ever since he was elected Pope of the Catholic Church. His unscripted off the cuff interviews on flights around the world have caused a stir whenever he offers an observation. The recent carnage in Paris stirred up a lot of attention on freedom of expression. He defended that freedom as a fundamental right and a duty to speak one’s mind for the sake of the common good without provoking others by insulting their faith.

It does appear that our world today knows no boundaries when it comes to satire or humor. It does get folks’ attention and makes them think about issues, but it also solicits extreme reactions. You would hope those reactions would materialize in the form of spirited debate and not violence so that both sides of an issue could be heard and understood. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen in Paris.

The primary attribute of the god most of the world’s religions worship is love. The primary goal of the worshipers should be to be more like their god. Unfortunately, there are those who don’t look too much like that. We seem to have an abundance of haters and critics these days. We do indeed need more encouragers to provide the impetus toward a kingdom of love right now, right here on earth—a world that embraces diversity and encourages us to take care of one another. Would that it could be so. And it can be so if we work to focus less on changing minds and more on changing hearts, which is what our God clearly sees--if we approach life more childlike, before all the cataracts of bias and prejudice and hate clouded our vision.