Retreat Meditation

I will be giving this short sermon during our Eucharist on Sunday to close out the retreat.

Luke 10:21-28
21At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

22"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

23Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

27He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

Through the power of the internet I have a group of friends who include a woman in England who is vicar of a small village parish. Her parish runs a program they call "Little Fishes" for the children of the village. Moms and Dads bring their little ones (roughly toddler through kindergarten) and spend a few hours listening to stories about God, playing games, and drawing pictures. My friend is leaving her parish for a new assignment soon and she told us about a little girl named Mia. At her last Little Fishes meeting Mia's mother brought my friend a picture Mia had drawn on the back of one of their story sheets.

Do you remember the pictures you drew as a really little girl? Colorful stick figures with big crayon names over their heads? Well Mia had drawn one of those pictures of her family. There were five figures on the paper. Right in the middle was a little girl, just to be sure Mia had written "ME" over her head. And there was a little stick figure cat, bright orange and named "Freckles." Freckles had died a few months before, but Freckles was still part of Mia's family. On the left side of the paper were two big people she had labeled "Mom" and "Dad." And on her right was on last figure, drawn with its stick arms spread wide and a big smile on its face. And over this person Mia wrote: "God."

"you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."

Mia understands. She's still young enough. She knows that God loves her, and she loves God and that is all that is needed for God to be a member of her family. She needs no theology or creed to have a personal, intimate relationship with her Creator.

We begin without fear. We draw, and we paint, and we build sand castles without judgment. It has been a long time, but when I was very little I drew huge murals. Whole villages and country-sides full of people and animals trees and houses. I told stories with those drawings taping sheets of paper together into a long scroll and drawing on and on adding as I went. And I took photographs of pine cones and icicles without thought for composition or form or technique, just because they were pretty and I wanted to share them.

But at some point a teacher tells us we've drawn a person wrong, or our painting is sloppy, or our pottery cup is lopsided and we begin to believe it. We start to look at what the other children are doing, at the art that hangs on the walls of our homes and we start to compare our own and find our work wanting.

When we're little we sit and listen with wide eyes to stories of the whale swallowing Jonah, to a star that traveled, to a stable birth, to God making people out of clay. And we believe in the power of those myths. I grew up the daughter of two naturalists. I knew that whales had baleen and ate krill. I knew they couldn't and wouldn't swallow people. I knew at some level that stars couldn't move around in the sky. But I believed anyway with the innocence of a child who has yet to learn words like "fact" and "corroboration." Truth was truth and I could hear the truth in those stories, just like Mia can. When we were little God loved us, and that was all that mattered. And then someone began to talk about theology, or debate creation and evolution, or ask us to memorize a creed, and for many God starts to fades out of their family portrait.

We grow up. We stop looking at the world with those wide soft eyes we used on our walk yesterday. We started looking at God's creation with hard adult eyes. We started judging and weighing, and we stopped playing and listening. And we lost sight of so much of it because of that. Jesus holds up little children as our example, and more than once Jesus promises the Kingdom of God to such people. When we were little the creative power God planted in each of us could flower and create and express without fear. We loved, and played, and created out of the instinct of our selves, created in the image of a creative and loving God.

As we leave here and drive home my prayer for each of us is that we will search within ourselves for our own Mia. For the little girl who knew God was part of her family and prayed that prayer with smiling faces and bright orange crayons. Amen.