At Evening With A Child

I have been re-reading the homily of Pope Francis on Opening The Door To Faith (see previous post here) and then came across this post from the archives which fits well with my thoughts as we start a new week.

 Source The Road by Richard Fogg

The call to say yes and follow in the footsteps of Christ begins and continues in  the rhythms and routines of everyday life. 

The walk along the road may be at times a blundering one, but increasingly with a sense of wonder and recognition that everything encountered is an aspect of God.

There are views and events to fascinate, be astonished by, however haphazard, mundane or even fragmented they sometimes may be.

 At the end of a long day often full of confusion, a space opens for powerful emotions to surface.

The bumbling "yes" still travels along in the depths and the Holy Spirit sifts and settles the raw material of the day and helps to bring it all into God's light.

In his book Crossing Mark Barrett says "that to commit to something we always have to be prepared to see in new ways and that the beginner is a wonderful image of the person in whom the Holy Spirit is at work, because no beginner believes they have attained something. 

The beginner sets out to encounter possibility, change and development.

There is something of what Jung might have called the "puer aeternus" in the person whose life has been marinated in the spirit of God, the "eternal child" who is constantly capable of beginning again."

Jesus, in commending the attitude of children, has frequently been interpreted in away that exploits the helplessness of children, leaving us with the impression that we are being told to do as we are told, follow the authority of the church.

A wiser understanding is that of the child as a beginner, as reservoir of all possibilities. Become as children:always be beginners."

Slowly, I begin to understand Mary's response: “May it be done to me according to your word.”

At Evening With A Child

Jessica Powers

We walk along a road
at the day's end, a little child and I,
and she points out a bird, a tree, a toad,
a stretch of colored sky.

She knows no single word
but "Ah" (with which all poems must commence,
at least in the heart's heart), and I am stirred
by her glad eloquence.

Her feet are yet unsure
of their new task; her language limited,
but her eyes see the earth in joy secure.

 And it is time I said:

Let the proud walls come down!
Let the cold monarchy be taken over!
I give my keys to rust, and I disown
castles of stone for ambushed roads in clover.

All the vast kingdoms that I could attain
are less to me than that the dusk is mild
and that I walk along a country lane
at evening with a child.

Source: Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau

From Inward Outward