The crisis of life in both kinds of society [racist and puritanical] is puberty, when the candor of childhood stands to be invested with sexual power, which would make it a threat both to current assumptions or pretentions, and to the survival of the same in future generations. The sexual man, possessed of a childlike clarity, threatens to PROPAGATE in the society the results of an elemental honesty which would be devastating. (p. 59)

What I have been leading up to is the idea that the maintenance of a continuity, a vital connection, between childhood vision and adult experience is a part of the obligation of a moral man. And I am certain that even though such an obligation may not enter moral consciousness, a man’s childhood under favorable circumstances may still become an effective disciplining force in adult thought and behavior. (p. 61)

[explaining a quote from Wordsworth:

The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. (p. 58)]

[Two uses of Abba in Babylonian Talmud] Both cases are in the context of miracle workers and their imperious childlike control of the divine power.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may I be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

… and it is not a little thing when whose who are so fresh from God love us.

If I were alone in a desert
and feeling afraid,
I would want a child to be with me.
For then my fear would disappear
and I would be made strong.
This is what life in itself can do
because it is so noble, so full of pleasure
and so powerful.

[Painting of girl looking at sheet hanging in the wind.]

Innocence is wisdom only of the spirit.  We can and do all learn from children, all through our life; but “become as little children” is a spiritual counsel, not an intellectual, practical, or ethical one.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

At first a childhood limitless and free
of any goals. Ah, sweet unconsciousness.

Yet hidden deep within the grown-up heart
a longing for the first world the ancient one …

Then from His place of ambush God leapt out.

The young child, Christ, is straight and wise
And asks questions of the old men, questions
Found under running water for all children
And found under shadows thrown on still waters
By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled.
Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,
Singing a low song in the loneliness.
And the young child, Christ, goes on asking
And the old men answer nothing and only know love
For the young child. Christ, straight and wise.

Kids:
They dance before they learn
there is anything that isn’t music.

Grant me, O God, the heart of a child, pure and transparent as a spring; a simple heart which never harbours sorrows; a heart glorious in selfgiving, tender in compassion; a heart faithful and generous which will never forget any good or bear a grudge for any evil. Make me a heart gentle and humble, loving without asking any return, largehearted and undauntable which no ingratitude can sour and no indifference can weary; a heart penetrated by the love of Jesus, whose desire will only be satisfied in heaven. Grant me, O Lord, the mind of thy dear Son.

The second saying (v. 15) … is related to the preceding saying in a way that constitutes a progression from Jesus’ attitude toward children to the attitude of the children themselves and finally to the attitude of disciples toward the Kingdom of God. The disciples hinder children who are being brought to Jesus for a blessing; Jesus says that … disciples need to learn from them how to be blessed.

Thus, prayer can be playful because the imagination plays with possibilities, putting them together in different combinations before we begin to enact them. Since children are naturally adept at such play, perhaps that is one reason Jesus said, “Unless you turn and become as children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

They stand on life’s street corners and sidewalks careful not to block our grown-up busyness. Unlike us they have no pressing appoointments to keep, no responsibilities, no obligations. Unlike us they have nothing but time.

And they stand and look at the passing world with questioning eyes.

Poor kids rich in love ask: Do you recall your father’s arems holding you dear?

Your mother’s tender embrace and healing touch?

Your family gathered ’round Grandma’s knees sharing yesterday’s tales and today’s adventures? No? Then how can you call yourselves rich or blessed?

Can grown-ups admit kids have something to teach us about trust and fun and life and God? Can they help us rediscover our better selves?

Lord, teach us to play, to laugh, to make friends, to ask honestly expecting to receive.

Teach us to quench our deeper thirst not at the wellsprings of power or privilege but at the life-giving waters of humble service.

Help us to become again like little children and so enter into your kingdom.

… we may add the example of a Synoptic saying of Jesus which seems to have been reinterpreted as a reference to Baptism. We speak of Matt xviii 3 (Mark x 15; Luke xviii 17): “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This verse is so close to what we have in John iii 3, 5 (becoming children=being begotten; in both verses this is the requirement for entering the kingdom of heaven) that Bernard and J. Jeremias think they are variants of the same saying of Jesus.

A child has not made up his mind yet about what is and what is not possible. He has no fixed preconceptions about what reality is; and if someone tells him that the mossy place under the lilac bush is a magic place, he may wait until he thinks that no one is watching him, but then he will very probably crawl in under the lilac bush to see for himself. A child also knows how to accept a gift. He does not worry about losing his dignity or becoming indebted if he accepts it. His conscience does not bother him because the gift is free and he has not earned it and therefore really has no right to it. He just takes it with joy.

[The kingdom of God] may be entered as a man crosses the bounds of one country and enters another, its passport being a child-like spirit.

[Columbanus] recommends how own way of life to their reverences (“if we all choose to be humble and poor for Christ’s sake”) and urges them, after “the Gospel saying,” to become as little children: “For a child is humble, does not harbor the remembrance of injury, does not lust after a woman when he looks on her, does not keep one thing on his lips and another in his heart.” It almost sounds as if the saint knows each bishop’s secret sin—and means to push it in his face.

This gene doesn’t make a mouse “smart” all by its biochemical self. Rather, the gene’s action allows adult mice to retain a neural openness for learning that young mice naturally possess but then lose in aging.

Even if Tien’s gene exists, and maintains the same basic function in humans (a realistic possibility), we will need an extensive regimen of learning to potentiate any benefit from its enhanced action. … We call this regimen “education.” Perhaps Jesus expressed a good biological insight when he stated (Matthew 18:3), “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Time is a game
played beautifully
by children

In with the luck!
Out with the demon!
And then for a while
Nothing but children’s voices.

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind. Nobody grows old by living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the glowing spirit to dust.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubts; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

It is by temporarily mislaying much of what we already know (or think we know) that cannabis restores a kind of innocence to our perceptions of the world, and innocence in adults will always flirt with embarrassment.

I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.

That is why children enjoy looking and listening so much. Why they are such wonderful mimics of grown-ups. They have tremendous concentration because they have no other concern than to be interested in things.

I lived as a monster, my only
hope is to die like a child.
In the otherwise vacant
and seemingly ceilingless

vastness of a snowlit Boston

church, a voice
said: I
can do that—

if you ask me, I will do it
for you.

Not even You
with your irresistible look
of infinite goodness
succeeded in moving
the heart
of the rich young man
And yet he from his childhood
had kept
all the commandments.
Lord, my Lord, may we never
out of mistaken charity
water down the terrible truths
You have spoken to the rich.

The thesis is that Jesus is proclaiming what might be termed permanent eschatology, the permanent presence of God as the one who challenges world and shatters its complacency repeatedly. (p. 26—beginning with Luke 17:20-24)

…the rich man can only experience the Kingdom if his world is shattered into poverty. Be it the world of demonic possession, of enriched security, or, elsewhere, of Pharisaic righteousness, the Kingdom is that which in shaking man’s world at its foundations establishes the dominion of God over against all such worlds. (p. 27)

Abbot Lot came to abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able I keep my little rule and my little fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven and his fingers became like lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.

Your heart is beating, isn’t it:
You’re not in chains, are you?

There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.

We too in our own way have often a quiet impression that we are keeping all the commandments sufficiently and inheriting the eternal life.

One day a tremendous duty opens before us and we are aghast at its hardness. What shall we do? What shall we answer? Is Christ deserving of everything from us, or only of part? It is a tremendous test which all cannot stand.

No evil deed—and no good deed, either—was named by him as an expression of the total mind of the doer. Once, when someone addressed him as “Good Master,” Jesus is quoted as having said, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good, but … God.”

We’re neither pure nor wise nor good
We’ll do the best we know
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood
And make our garden grow,
And make our garden grow.

Love and justice should not become givens, as if we’ve already arrived at a sufficient understanding of what’s good. While he was willing to be called a teacher by his interlocutors, he evidently resisted the appellation of “good”: “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18). This report might serve as a reminder that we’d do well to maintain a sense of ongoing deferral when it comes to decreeing our doctrines, our accomplishments, our histories, our traditions, and the interpretations through which we perceive them as good or awesome or somehow ethically sufficient.

     Go easy on the presumption of the good, he seems to say, as if our haste toward fixed concepts might become an obstacle to actually trying to put into practice the things the “good teacher” says.

     I don’t think the point of the story is to invite our judgment of him, or of ourselves, for that matter, but to recognize how Jesus loves even those who aren’t yet wholehearted, generous, or pure.
    I imagine that what might have sustained him as he groped his way to a new relationship with God was a look of complete, unstinting, divine love.

“Sell everything” was a teaching for this particular man at this particular moment. If he had immediately said, “Yes, sir, I will,” we don’t know how Jesus would have responded. I remember a dialogue between Zen Master Seung Sahn and one of his early, hippie disciples, who was very attached to his long blond pony-tail. After a great deal of earnest persuasion, the student finally realized the extent of his attachment. “Okay,” he said, “you win, I’ll cut it off.” At which point Seung Sahn laughed and said, “Now that it’s okay to cut it off, you don’t need to.”

… anyone who practices contemplative prayer in a disciplined way will be confronted, sooner or later, with Christ’s words to the rich young man. Because if one thing is sure, it is that we are all rich young men asking, “Teacher what must I do to possess everlasting life?” It is not so clear yet that we are ready to hear the answer.

Thus we can say that contemplative prayer and voluntary poverty are the two main pillars that support a celebate life.

The call is an invitation: “Come with me.” It is an invitation not primarily to generosity, but a meeting in love.

A certain brother, renouncing the world and giving the things he owned to the poor, kept a few things in his own possession. He came to Abbot Anthony. When the elder heard about all this he said to him: If you want to be a monk go to that village and buy meat, and place it on your naked body and so return here. And when the brother had done as he was told, dogs and birds of prey tore at his body. When he returned to the elder, the latter asked if he had done as he was told. The brother showed him his lacerated body. Then Abbot Anthony said: Those who renounce the world and want to retain possession of money are assailed and torn apart by devils just as you are.

Dare he, for whom circumstances make it possible to realize his true destiny, refuse it simply because he is not prepared to give up everything else?

During a lecture Suzuki Roshi had said that life was impossible. “If it is impossible, how can we do it?” a student asked.

“You do it every day,” Suzuki answered.

All of us are familiar with the almost universal Sunday school question whether rich people can go to heaven when they die. But Jesus was not speaking primarily of a rich person’s future destiny. It was the rich person’s availability now as a follower and disciple that concerned Jesus.

Nothing is easier according to the world than to live in high office and great wealth; nothing is more difficult than to live in them according to God and without acquiring an interest in them and a liking for them.

Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come into the woods you must leave behind
the six day’s world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool alone
expecting nothing, remembering nothing
into the ease of sight the brotherhood of eye and leaf.

That doesn’t mean rich people are excluded or not welcome.  It means that it is nearly impossible for them to catch the vision of interdependent community, dependent on God and one another.

W. Barrett has given the following example: “Or when another Master remarks on the difficulty of solving one of the Zen questions—which is equivalent to answering the riddle of existence itself—he does not merely say that it is difficult or so very very difficult that it is well-nigh impossible, but this: ‘It is like a mosquito trying to bite into an iron bull.’ The image lives because the image suggests the meaning beyond conceptualization.” One recalls the saying of Jesus in Mark 10:25 concerning the shattering of personal world necessary for the rich man to accept the Kingdom.

I have my own needle’s
eye, harder than that
for camels, a plethora
of fives, triple-humped and broken,
wedging toward the good

You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

the kingdom belongs to the poor
who do not envy the rich
to the ones who give away coat and overcoat
who put a beaten traveller up
at an inn and pay with excommunicated coin
who offer a few loaves
for a blessed multiplication
who unostentatiously drop a mite
in the collection basket.
These will breeze through the needle’s eye
into the kingdom.

I could have done it easily but for the
tick   tick   tick    of the kitchen timer
held haughtily in your hand.
What was your hurry—
camel, needle, both on lease from Arabia and me paying?

The head was no problem,
went through quickly like stiff thread
without a nick on the nose or chin.
His neck was as pliable as a noodle.
The front hooves, padded paws—both performed admirably,
tap dancing themselves through the steel loop.

All liquid drained from the paunch,
I effortlessly rolled that through the needle’s eye
while you grunted, “Impossible!
Inconceivable—a dromedarius, the single hump,
stuck for years at the opening!”

I could have done it all:
popped his mound like a boil,
poked fur through the slot with a thimble
if you’d given me a bit more time,
allowed me another second.

Humility is the eye of the needle
And I am a camel, hulking, clumsy.
Go through! Go through! And suddenly everything
Is easy and simple and paradise for us mortals, ordained.

In the sandy sea the waves are yellow,
Among them I am lost, a desert ship.
O God, let me go through! Let the Will of the Pilot
Henceforth change the set of sail.

Let me become like thread, and put anxiety aside,
So the doorkeeper’s hand will lead
Me through the triumphal gates
Of the eye of the needle.

Time to begin

slimming down
for the eye of the needle

He who desires the next world must not possess even a pot of rice-bran bean paste.

My God, my Father, I want to bless You from the bottom
of my heart. Let all that is in me bless Your Holy Name!
I am full, my God, above all that I can say. What have I
done for so many blessings? My whole village that thinks
of me, surrounds me with its prayers and its love—
these countless signs that you have multiplied for me.
O my God, yes! Have I not received hundreds and
hundreds of times more than I have left: houses brothers
and sisters, fathers and mothers!
Let all that is in me bless Your Holy Name.

… the omission of fathers is consistent with Christ’s teaching in Matthew that we should call no one father but God (23:9). In an age in which fathers were seen as the lifeline of the family, the seemingly indispensable authority and provident centerpiece, this statement id God’s final triumph over patriarchy.

I own no property and yet I feel that I am perhaps the richest person in the world. For I have never been in want either for myself or for my public concerns. God has always and invariably responded in time … It is open to the world therefore to laugh at my dispossessing myself of all property. for me the dispossession has been positive gain. I would like people to compete with me in my contentment. It is the richest treasure I own.

Not you standing with your host by a window talking
and not you poised for light where it falls to admire
what it finds: we are looking for someone different
from any of us and from those we have always prized.
It isn’t “accomplishment,” not that. It isn’t
how you look, or sound. It may be a helpless
lock on a certain way that no party can change
nor authority dictate outside the room of your mind.
Maybe you choose, and then time begins to deny,
but far somewhere what is yours begins to come
and nothing–nothing–can stop it between: you have turned
a corner and become the self that chose its own prize.
“What must you give” they ask “to serve the king?”
And you don’t have to say but you know: everything.

Still, communion is your authentic desire, and it will be given to you. But you have to dare to stop seeking gifts and favors like a petulant child and trust that your deepest longing will be fulfilled. Dare to lose your life and you will find it. Trust in Jesus words: “There is no one who …”

… this is, for [Mark] just one more illustration of how great a gap there was between the mind of Jesus and the minds of the disciples in the period leading up to the crucifixion. … But in the traditions of the church preserved in Mark there was no idealizing or glorifying of them. Rather, the tradition seems to have gone in the opposite direction, preserving the record of their blindness and slowness to understand, their addiction to ways of thinking directly contrary to the mind of Jesus. (p. 289)

Fear not this goodness
as a thing impossible,
nor the pursuit of it as
something alien,
set a great way off;
it hangs on our own choice.

A Jesus life of this kind is steeped so deeply in the spirit of brotherliness that in it nobody strives for a high position but only for the simplest way of serving and helping.

Every Christmas I’m struck at how the word of the Lord hits the world with the force of a hint.We want to be GOD and God wants to be a babe in a manger.

It is to consent to being afflicted, so to speak, to the destruction of oneself. It is to deny yourself. In denying ourselves, we become capable under God to affirm the other by creative affirmation. We give ourselves as a ransom for the other. It is an act of redemption.

[Bartimaeus’] faith is an act of hope which refuses to settle for the status quo: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). This blind man’s only resource was things hoped for, things not seen, and such faith gave him sight. Faith is an overt act of self-assertion by which the man knows he is entitled to healing. In asserting his faith, the beggar performs an act of subversion; he violates all the conventions and steps out of his assigned role. Faith is the courage to speak, to announce of oneself a new possibility.

1. The man’s illness reflects a powerlessness in society that leads to economic disadvantage and physical liability (the two tending to go together).

2. The community wishes to perpetuate the man’s powerlessness by forcing him to be silent.

3. Hope leads the man to speak out, which is an act of social subversion.

4. It is the availability of Jesus as a committed partner in dialogue that permits healing to take place. In that dialogue, there is power to transform life. And the unreported result of that transformation is that the community’s life is transformed as well.