Seven pounds, four ounces and, oh, so beautifully delicate: our granddaughter, Zoey Ava, was born on June 14 at 5:45 pm after seven hours of labor.
My first thought, on being invited to hold the baby, embracing one so tiny after so many years, was a familiar one: “be careful, Don’t hold her too hard or, God forbid, drop her!”Most of us with children can recall these troubling, intrusive thoughts (that are actually designed to inspire an excess of caution) as we bring every ounce of care and attention to our newborn.
We are awestruck by the exquisitely precious vulnerability, an utter dependence! A little reflection reveals just how much time we work as adults to avoid vulnerability, fragility and our desperate need for connection and caring. In the so called “ Baby Place,” the loving postpartum wing of the hospital where Zoey was born, the midwife and nurses place a big premium on “skin to skin” time when mom and baby can feel each other, breath together, hear each other’s heartbeats. This is a profoundly moving and critical communion ( now fully recognized as such by physicians).
A newborn cuts through our otherwise practiced distancing from vulnerability. The baby charges the air around her, electrifying it with sacredness, wonder and a sense of the miraculous. We are reduced to just a few simple words, a rush of tears, and the making of soft, reassuring and joyful vocalizations. One newborn can change hearts and minds in an instant. Just one! Even the deepest cynic is likely to smile ( if only briefly, on the inside). New life cries out to all life in concelebration of Cosmic Eucharist. Waves of love travel out in all directions and so all the world feels renewed.
In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, Jesus tells the story of the smallest of seeds, that produces a medium sized bush height-wise, a weed actually (though yielding a popular spice). He likens the Kingdom of God to it. His choice of the mustard seed metaphor is a striking one. While the bush doesn’t grow very tall, it’s horizontal growth is steady and tenacious. It will, in time, take over a landscape. Very tall things, like trees, on the other hand, are certainly more conspicuous, but are way more easily toppled.
God Almighty came into this world as a fragile innocence. That innocence, purity and knowledge of the true Way of the Heart endures and it is still growing in us and reaching across the landscape of hearts and minds. We are exhorted to be “again as little children” who sweeten the air and space around them with their genuineness, openness and surrender.
In celebrating our granddaughter, I am reminded again to surrender to the movement and moment of Christ. Surely, the Divine Presence is spreading like the mustard bush, in all directions. It will endure and transform the landscape, Though today’s news is filled with distressing portents of ill winds, I listen to baby Zoey’s voice, and I am soothed and reassured.
There is much to relearn from the full and authentic presence of little children before they learn to live according to someone else’s story. We are invited by them to recall our True selves and work to be who we were meant to be.
Whose story are we each living? Do we see our frailty and hear the call back to simple joy in surrender to the One on whom we really depend? Only when our story becomes His, can our smallness change the world.
From the smallest and humblest of seeds come mighty transformations!
The Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi, expressed it with simple and arresting elegance: “Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
© The Harried Mystic, 2018 and Br. Anton, TSSF. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
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