The older I grow the more I realize how precious the gift of childhood is. Children are like tender shoots grown from the ground; fresh and green with new minds, hearts and bodies. I can only marvel at them. Humility is not a virtue they must practice. They dwell in the being of reality. Emotionally honest for a time whether the adults that tower above them like it or not. Their tender minds experience life quite differently than our world’s cultured mind. Wonder is fresh. They take the time to explore, gaze, feel, watch, imagine, play, cry, laugh, dance, tell us stories and sing with uninhibited zeal. They know what is precious and they see the treasures of heaven. They absorb true love like sponges and are often generous with giving their hearts away. There is no judgment, but there is a keen sense of discernment. Their radar goes out and feels the world’s reality that all too soon begins to shape them. So often they are the ones with baffling wise words. It is no wonder heaven and the great spiritual teachers remind us to be as they are, living in a complete upside down way from all of our cultured conditioning.
I have now come to know the truth is, we are, still within the deep of ourselves, the children of Original Essence. We simply forget.
When the inner child movement swept across the world, I was reluctant to believe it was true. I would even tell you, I was cynical about what felt like another trend in contemporary psychology. Inner child circles were popping up everywhere with people coming together with their stuffed animals and childhood toys. I did however, have the door cracked open just a bit, through the writings of John Bradshaw’s classics on healing the child within. By that time in my life, I had already put aside the child in my being, tucked her away in the recesses of my unconscious mind and left her there in the shadows of my heart. I traded her in for a very self reliant, strong minded young woman to overcome the challenges life had given me. I wanted to do important work in the world and my left brain mind that does everything intellectual became well educated and iron clad, believing that was the road to the important work I needed to do.
Then everything changed. My inner life spun in a hurricane of turmoil. I had lost touch with my truest self and I embarked on a search to ease inner pain. I read a library full of self help books and searched for healing in the Spirit through the wisdom of spiritual teachers. I was convinced that if I just understood with my mind, all would be well. And of course, all the insight I gained and the gift of spiritual practices have all been deeply significant graces of God in the unfolding of inner healing over my life time.
In the midst of my quest, I found myself in the winds of Divine love setting my sails toward a weekend workshop with a beautiful nun of the Catholic faith. I was not Catholic, but I was invited by dear Catholic friends who I prayed with for years in a small prayer house west of town. Together we went and sure enough there were grown men and women among us with teddy bears. “Oh my”, I thought. “What have I gotten myself into?”
The nun who was leading the workshop stood with serene confidence and talked about Carl Jung’s understanding of the deep unconscious and the power it yields and the pain it expresses in our lives regardless of how intelligent, wealthy, comfortable, competent or self directed we had become. I got curious. Then she proceeded to invite us into a meditation to plunge the depths of our own deep. Mind you, meditation was not familiar to me and at that time was absolutely suspect as the new age movement swept across the contemporary culture of the day. But she was a kind Catholic nun. Never the less, sitting on the floor, I closed my eyes and entered into the quiet space calling on Jesus to be my inner guide from the depths of my heart. For me, that space was just dark. Unknown and certainly not trusted by my reeling intellectual mind asking relentlessly, “Is this ok? Am I safe?” Nothing. I simply sat there in the dark with fear rustling and my rational mind spinning. And then quite suddenly, a sliver of light broke through the darkness and turned into a tunnel of light and there I saw her; a child dancing in the light with uninhibited freedom and joy. Remarkable! That was it. No answers, no solutions, no complicated theories, no psychological treaties, or spiritual doctrines; just her, a simple child dancing in the light breaking through the clad iron darkness of my being. And that little glimpse of deeply felt experience, changed my inner life forever. It was the beginning of a homecoming. A return to the holy essence of the child that lives within all of us. That moment set the course for the rest of my life’s unfolding and the inner journey of my soul’s true story. Of course it has not been easy, romantic or simple. It has been a year after year journey. And yes, my life has been fraught with sufferings and my own forgetting but that glimpse has remained always with me, a vision of spiritual light; a hope that carries me through.
What I have come to know is that the solution to all my sufferings both physical and otherwise always begins by returning home to my childlike essence in God and with God. And the important work? The important work is to protect the gift and holy essence of this childhood within ourselves and the young ones who dwell among us as we go about the sometimes complex and daunting work of the world.
The child within us never leaves us. I have found that all the ages we have ever been continue to be within us as Macrina Wiederkehr writes in her book, Song of The Seed. Of course, we are and God is, regardless of our thinking worlds, always with us as hope and common grace, even in the darkest and coldest of nights when life makes no sense. I am alive and well because of this.
The child of God I saw that day, my original essence born of his image, breaking through the darkness with her unashamed freedom and humility dancing in the light, changed my life forever.
The Psalmist of the ancient Hebrew text writes, “God wraps himself in light as if it were a robe spreading out the sky like a canopy.” Psalms 104:2
I wonder how you see of the holy essence of the child within yourself?