Concerning Babes, Dragons, and the Kingdom for the Childlike

It was catching the gaze of a child at a Dragon’s mouth that turned me anew to ponder childlikeness. Well, it was really standing on a wooden platform, looking into Dragon’s Mouth Spring at Yellowstone National Park while on a long road trip with a friend, helping move him from Texas to Seattle. The Spring was causing steam to vent and water to lap at the rocks, much like a dragon’s tongue. What caught me was the gaze of a child strapped into his father’s baby carrier; drawing my attention was not the Dragon’s mouth but rather the child, with its gaze of openness out to the world, to others, to me. There was seemingly no fear or anxiety in its eyes, strapped close and secure to his father’s beating heart. Perhaps you’ve seen a gaze like this before with a niece or nephew of yours, or your own child, or like I did, a stranger’s child, gazing up, looking out—not perhaps, a gaze we entering adulthood, or those far along its road, might find being cast out by ourselves. 

“Oh just adulting”, “You know, doing adulting things”, “Figuring out adulting.” Common phrases of those born in the 90s or early 2000s who are now entering a new era of life that can be characterized by the break-down of circumstances once familiar in the transition out of college, new responsibilities, and new loneliness. Anxiety, work, bills and student loans accompany many into this time. Yet, how does Jesus invite us into this time of “adulting”, in life after college? Perhaps, in a humble return to a life many knew before the so-called “greatest time of life,” as college is sometimes (tragically) dubbed. Perhaps there is an invitation to return or to discover childhood afresh, even as we become “adults.” 

Does the movement from childhood to adulthood break down our ability to have that gaze? Are we trained to let go of it by going to school, focusing on deadlines and the ever constant next thing, whether school, or career?  Getting lost looking too far “forward” or “backward”, lost in hypothetical futures or broken or seemingly better pasts? Or, lost buried in the demands or confused desires of the “now”. I don’t claim to know with certainty why the breakdown occurs, but I do think it often does. At the least, I certainly can get lost on a path that leads away from wonder, from gazing out like I once did before I could speak, recognizing it most recently in the stepping into life after receiving two pieces of paper bearing fancy lettered script.

Perhaps concerns we share with Jesus’ followers motivated the disciples to ask their question; perhaps concerns of meaning, hopes, love, honor, success, or status, or even just a speculative curiosity, drove the disciples to ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Mt 18:1). Jesus does not respond by saying it is those who secure the best paying job (or who enters the top schools), nor does he respond by saying it is those who learn certain skills, nor does he say it is those with a large social media following, or those who find a spouse. Nor does he say it is those with (the most) friends. He doesn’t say it is those who avoid a midlife crisis, or those who have it. And he doesn’t say it is those who follow their dreams (or those who succeed in doing so). He doesn’t say it is those who can win theological debates or who read the best books. He excludes many possible answers. Sure, some of the things mentioned as non-answers didn’t exist at the time, but I doubt that’s the underlying reason for Jesus’s actual reply.

Jesus’s response is different: He calls over a child and places it in their midst, and says, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” (Mt 18:1-5)  Yet, how can we “turn and become like children?” Especially as a person takes on demanding responsibilities in the world? How can this be possible when faced with demands, paying taxes, becoming engineers, spouses, priests, religious, fathers, mothers, health-care workers, baristas, writers, ect., and walking down new roads of life? How can we “humble ourselves like this child?” In all of that? Are we adults left hurtling on a train that takes us far far away from our childhood, and because of Christ’s answer, equally far from the Kingdom of God? Something else from that road trip that had me at Dragon’s Mouth Spring, leads me to say, “No.””

  Pendelton, Oregon, St. Mary’s Church. The last day before we made it to Seattle. Unexpectedly, following Mass, there was the opportunity for Adoration. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed and placed in a monstrance in a small chapel一and then there I was, gazing out like that child strapped in close to his father’s heart. 

Adoration invites the person adoring to gaze like that child I saw by the Dragon’s mouth: with openness, with wonder, with love; it’s form invites the participant to look at the Blessed Sacrament, exposed in the monstrance. Likewise, it’s very form demands we find ourselves in Jesus’s midst—like the child that Jesus called over to him and picked up. Furthermore, it can be an opportunity to humble ourselves by letting go of the world of “adulting” to be with Jesus, recognizing that my ability to get my things done will not save me. That “letting go”, however, does not have to be a leaving behind at the doorsteps to the Church, but rather, a letting go of them into Jesus’s (and the Father’s) care and bringing them, along with all the joys and concerns of my heart and mind, to Jesus. “He who can put off till tomorrow / Is he who is most pleasing to God”, writes Chalres Péguy in his poetic voice of God, “[b]ecause between today and tomorrow, I, God, may have passed by.” In going to Adoration and putting our concerns in Jesus’s care, Christ will not only pass by, but be before us. And, if we let go of our concerns at his feet, can he not more easily pick us up like that child described in Matthew’s Gospel, and hold us in His love?

Yet has this helped us in life outside the chapel? Maybe it does not have to, but, do we not upon leaving fall prey to becoming “adults” again? Aristotle can provide encouragement. He notes concerning the virtues in Book II of his Nicomachean Ethics, “we get [them] by first exercising them…For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. [we] become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” I’ve found this to ring true in my recent barista training, learning by doing (though there is certainly more to learn). Hence, by gazing and humbling ourselves in adoration, by participating in the form of adoration, we can be formed in a childlike wonder. Our gazing and humbling forms us to be humble and perhaps to gaze with a little more wonder as we go out into the world, perhaps too a little more security in the heavenly Father’s love for us, helping us gaze lovingly outwards to the world, to those we meet, and even ourselves. 

So we best draw near to the child of which John writes in Revelation to become childlike: “Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth.” (Rv 12:4) The Dragon is defeated, and it is in our being before that child (and that woman) that can help us grow in humility, in love, and wonder, helping us enter more fully into the Kingdom in which the childlike play.

Photo: Public Domain