Roberta and I will be traveling in Peru from 5/23 – 6/6, to visit her son, Nick, who is in the Peace Corps serving in a little Quechua-speaking village called Chetilla in the northern mountains. I’ll give you a report on our return! Many of you have included Nick in your prayers since he left for Peru, and he appreciates your “good vibes”. He’s got another year to go, and we are grateful we get to visit him in the middle of his commitment. We can’t wait to go and sit with him on the log in front of his one-room house, and listen to what he has discovered.
From our conversations with him by phone and email (when he visits the nearest city where there are connections), we can tell that he isn’t quite the same guy to whom we gave a tearful send-off a year ago. Clearly, this experience has raised his self-confidence and emotional maturity, to say nothing of his growth in linguistic skills and understanding of the world’s complexities. He’s become a true citizen of the planet, and we look forward to learning from him. (Which you can do directly: Nick Maran -- [email protected].)
In Isaiah chapter 11, the prophet has a vision of peace and harmony: “...a little child shall lead them,” he wrote. This passage was grafted into the Christmas tradition. Wise men from the East came to seek inspiration from Jesus when he was an infant. The rabbis in the temple in Jerusalem engaged in scholarly discourse with Jesus when he was but twelve years old. In the past week, I’ve absorbed wisdom of various kinds from my daughter, step-daughter, and step-son. Our children are leading and teaching us, inspiring us to be bold, to be honest, to see things differently, to explore things we never thought about on our own. And they’re inspiring us to travel to places we’d otherwise never see!
I started to think of kids as my teachers when I began doing youth ministry. At retreats and camps, I’d get to spend hours with youngsters, just listening to them and hanging out. And when I paid attention, I would discover their profound insights, their keen observations – things that many adults seemed to miss. Fact is, we adults can be educated and experienced into ignorance! Sometimes, what we call “learning” is just the installation of mental filters that keep out ideas or experiences that don’t fit certain commonly-held assumptions. Young people haven’t installed all those filters yet, so more experiences can “get through” to them and fascinate them. There are a lot of ways to imagine Jesus. You can imagine him as the pale fellow with the long beard, or the agonized figure on the cross, or the radiant entity of the resurrection. Right now I’m imagining him as a twelve-year-old boy, skinny and a bit awkward. The cord around his cloak isn’t quite straight, and his skull-cap is askew on his head. But there he is, hanging out with the rabbis in the temple, and after a while of conversing with him, they give up their condescension toward him. They realize that this kid is a rabbi, a teacher of the Jewish law, like them. He’s got the gift. He may not have nearly the base of experience that they have, but he’s the real thing, nonetheless. He proposes and argues fine interpretive points of the Jewish scriptures, and the other rabbis listen admiringly. “A child shall lead them,” said their scriptures -- and there he was.
Our faith inspires us to allow ourselves to be led by children – ours or others. To be led by people who are a lot younger and less experienced than we are. Jesus died at age 33, approximately. In this era, that’s young. There’s hardly a Catholic cardinal who is less than twice that age. I’m two decades older than Jesus ever lived to be, and yet I still turn to him for guidance in times of trouble, for inspiration in living out the law of love that he preached.
So after sitting at his feet for two weeks, I’ll report to you on any wisdom I glean from my 24-year-old stepson. Till then, may the 12-year-old Jesus guide and teach us all!