Where's Your Inner Child?

St David's Uniting Church, Canterbury

October 5, 2003

"WHERE'S YOUR INNER CHILD?"

"Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child

will never enter it." (Mark 10:15)

It was Monday morning; the parson was tired. But his garden was good therapy. He had a new mailbox and was smoothing a square of concrete around the post. Little boy from next-door was watching closely. Too closely; he overbalanced and put a foot in the concrete. The parson lost his cool and said a few words. A lady stopped and remonstrated with him. "You of all people," she said, "should remember what Jesus taught us about loving the little children." "Madam," he replied, "I love them in the abstract – but I hate them in the concrete!"

If you infer from today's text that Jesus was starry-eyed about children, that is not the case. How do we know this? In both Matthew and Luke you have him rebuking some critics. They pick on John the Baptist because he lives out in the desert as an ascetic, wearing a sack and surviving on honey and grasshoppers. "He's gone crazy," they say, "cutting himself off from social contact and all the good things that can mean." Jesus meanwhile mixes with all sorts, some of whom are considered pretty disreputable. Of him they say, "He's a glutton and a drunk, a friend of ratbags!" With the self-righteous and the sanctimonious, it seems neither John nor Jesus can get it right. So, what does Jesus say?

He says, "You remind me of a bunch of ill-natured, grizzling little kids together. Whingeing little horrors. One group says, 'Hey, let's play weddings.' The others say, 'Nah, we don't wanna do that today.' 'OK, let's play at funerals, then.' Then the others say, 'Nah, we don't wanna do that.'" Jesus shakes his head. It doesn't seem to matter what some of them offer. The others will find something to whinge about. So, he's not starry-eyed about kids; that's plain enough.

But then you've got this other fascinating reference to children. He sees them embodying something which is our entry visa for this new order he calls 'the kingdom'. "Except you become as little children . . . " What in the wide world do you think he means by that? Something about childlikeness that we need to guard and keep. And if we have lost it, we need to retrieve it: this 'inner child'. It suggests three things to me, from observing children.

First and most obvious is that a child is growing and developing – initially at a quite extraordinary rate. Barring incident, a healthy baby will roughly double its birth weight in the first six months. If birth weight were 3.6kg (about 8lbs for you pre-decimals!) and that rate of physical growth continued, Junior would weigh in on his or her tenth birthday at about 4000 tonnes – the size of a small ship! But we're not just talking size.

There's lots more happening. Other development relates to managing body movement and co-ordination, learning to communicate, becoming conscious of oneself in a world of others, pursuing a heap of developmental tasks – mentally, socially and emotionally. Along with this goes an insatiable curiosity, because everything is new! But then it seems that some get to be like the writer of Ecclesiastes, who says, "There's nothing new under the sun." Ho, hum!

Enter the French priest Michel Quoist. The good Abbé Quoist was well-known as chaplain with youth clubs and other groups in and around Le Havre, but little known outside France until the English version of his "Prayers of Life" came out in 1963. It begins with a meditation called "I like youngsters", based on Jesus' words about recovering your inner child. This is how it goes.

God says: I like youngsters. I want people to be like them.

I don't like old people unless they are still children.

I want only children in my kingdom; this has been decreed from the beginning of time.

Youngsters – twisted, humped, wrinkled, white-bearded – all kinds of youngsters, but youngsters.

There is no changing it, it has been decided, there is room for no one else.

I like little children because my likeness has not yet been dulled in them.

They have not botched my likeness, they are new, pure, without a blot, without a smear.

So, when I gently lean over them, I recognize myself in them.

I like them because they are still growing, they are still improving.

They are on the road, they are on their way.

But with grown-ups there is nothing to expect any more.

They will no longer grow, no longer improve.

They have come to a full stop.

It is disastrous – grown-ups think they have arrived.

(Source: Michel Quoist, Prayers of Life, Gill & Son, 1966 Ed., p.3)

Second is that children live in the 'now'. It is an adult thing to be constantly fretting over our yesterdays and fussing over our tomorrows. In a book called "The Wisdom of Insecurity", Alan Watts wrote,

"What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week's meals become 'now'.

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now."

Clyde Reid ran workshops for adults, helping them to enjoy the now, and wrote about this in a little book called "Celebrate the Temporary" that I can see from where I sit at my desk. Reid tells of one workshop in the grounds of a Benedict-ine monastery, on the campus of St John's University in Minnesota. He had instructed members of the workshop to take ten minutes to walk outside in silence, letting something of beauty draw them. Several monks who lived on the campus were attending this workshop. Reid had asked members to relax, breathe deeply, to let the beauty around them into their awareness. A short while later the group began drifting back inside. Reid said he would never forget one monk saying, "I've lived here most of my life. But this morning, in ten minutes, I saw things I have walked by for years and never noticed!"

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus counsels against wasting our juices on fussing about the morrow. "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own." He's not saying we should repudiate foresight, visioning and planning; rather, that we shouldn't get so busy looking behind or ahead that we cannot celebrate the now. Jesus' word about sin forgiven is another way of saying "God isn't fretting about yesterday; neither should you." That is what I would call 'living in the now' – which is a childlike quality.

III

Third, children have an unabashed sense of the comic. Mind you, their humour is not very sophisticated, and there's a sameness about it. We stayed recently with the Adelaide branch of our family. My son asked, "Is scatological humour trans-cultural? Do all kids everywhere find that stuff hilarious?" I said I thought this was probably the case. I remember the first time one of our grandchildren said, "Pop, did you hear the one about . . . ?" I had a fair idea what was coming. I had to do a quick think about the way I should react. Should I recognise what was hilarious to the child, and laugh along with him? Or should I frown and make my disapproval plain? As things turned out, I found it hard to contain my mirth. But when we had settled down, I took the opportunity to say, "Some people might think that was rude. If they look a bit cross, you'll know why."

Children's sense of the comic has to do principally with the body and its workings. There is an earthiness about it that reminds us of things we like to think we have transcended. It's a bit of a worry to be reminded that we have much in common with the animal world, especially in the fact that we too are made of stardust, via the primeval slime. Perhaps the humour of a child stops us getting too exalted a view of ourselves?

I happen to believe humour is a profoundly religious matter. In fact, I preached on it at the university for a whole semester in 1990. The series was called "In the Image of a Smiling God". We dealt with humour as a coping mechanism, as in the case of the Jews. We looked at it as a 'litmus test' of one's values; what makes you laugh says a lot about you as a person! We talked of it as a sign of maturity. The mature are those who can laugh at themselves. Self-mockery is very important in high order Zen Buddhism.

We also noted how some recent research has shown laughter to be good for our health. It reduces stress, which helps the immune system. Laughter also releases endorphins, a natural pain-killer made by the body. Blood vessels relax, which helps reduce blood pressure. When we laugh, nearly every organ in the body is exercised. Some hospitals have incorporated humour into the treatment of recovering patients. They report that laughing can help the sick to recover more quickly!

I once preached a sermon at St Michael's on "Laughing as a Religious Matter and Religion as a Laughing Matter." At the door a man wrung my hand, and said "You have delivered me to laugh in church after forty years of enforced silence. I once laughed in church; my father took me outside and whacked me!"

There is so much more we could say about recovering your inner child. This morning's reflections have by no means exhausted the image, in which you doubtless can see other shades of meaning. This is the genius of Jesus' sayings. I once heard Davis McCaughey say there were as many shades of meaning to a parable as people who read or hear it. The Lord surely has more light and truth to break forth from his word!

Scriptures:

Hebrews 1:1-4. Jesus as 'revealer' of God

Mark 10:13-16. Jesus welcomes children – as 'models'

An address delivered by Rev Dr John Bodycomb at St David's Uniting Church, Canterbury on Sunday, October 5, 2003.
MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.