learning to be a child

These days have been exciting for me. Physically boring, maybe, but my brain is barely still for a moment.

Friends. My spirit is waking up.

I blame Therese, i.e. St. Therese of Lisieux. Also Evelyn Waugh, the Apostle Luke, and Tim Keller. That motley crew.

While there are some things that I can barely put into pictures in my mind, let alone words in a blog post, I think what it comes down to is set up quite nicely in Luke 9:46-48...

An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by His side and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives Him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

I speak with the very opposite of pride when I say: I think I have always been sort of a large person. Growing up, I was the one who would do big things.
A very certain way to please me is to remark on how fit I am
for grand works of intellect,
   for leadership,
      for respectable places like Notre Dame,
         for public performance,
            for speaking to adults...
and honestly, you might be right. With the exception of the first, these are places I have been and thrived. I come alive at the opportunity to direct, to organize, to plan, to conduct, to achieve. And not just anything, but things of monumental significance. If something I have to do does not immediately appear to be of such significance, by gum I'm going to twist it so that it is.

This year I started to learn that I am perhaps not so fit as I might like to think. And I have started to learn to rejoice in my insufficiency for truly great matters, like the turning of a soul towards God. --but many times I don't bother to look for joy like that, and instead go back and lean on those things in which I know I'm competent.

I want to be great. I want to do great things.

Never has my heart been struck by a desire to be small. Or if it has, it's recovered rather quickly. I see passages like the one above and try to brainstorm up ways to be dramatically childlike and GREAT. This, obviously, is stupid ('dramatically childlike' being an oxymoron), and I usually burn out after about five minutes.

But... a lot of my reading/listening lately has been very focused, and very confrontational.
It is impossible to reflect on the Lord's Prayer through the lens of Our Father without feeling the need to be a child.
It is impossible to read the words of Therese without desiring the simplicity, awe, and love she breathes.
It is impossible to be proud of the way of grandness when one is shown the value of littleness.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God. But what if poverty of spirit is not something you achieve through great works of discipline and penitence, but something you are born with or not? The character I see in Therese, and in some people I know personally, is not the sort of thing that can be worked for oneself. That would defeat the point.

Jesus... said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But He said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”   (Luke 18:26-28)

This is kind of life-changing. It's thrilling what Jesus is saying. 'You think you're rich? That wealth is to your detriment, it is poverty, when you are trying to obtain the Kingdom. --But wait! That's perfect: I desire your poverty. I want to give you a pearl of great value, to make you Beautiful.'

What is impossible with man is possible with God.

I am utterly dependent on His love.

Somehow, in the desire to become small, poor, and childlike, I have known myself to be just that.