Writings: Suffer the little children, ’cause that’s you, bud

I remember when I was a wee urchin that one of my uncles, ages ago, said to me & my fellow urchin noisy brother, “You know where it says in the New Testament, ‘suffer the little children to come to me’?”

Brother & I went to Catholic school, Episcopal church, Boy Scouts, occasional monk school & Sunday school, so we agreed we were familiar with the line.

“Well, if you don’t pipe down, you chil’ren gonna suffer! Hold it down!” Thus we understood the text & subtext & his deeper meaning.

I do not mean to suggest my good uncle was wrong, but rather would suggest that such things mean different things as we go along. Different interpretations meet different needs, on different days.

The Aramaic Bible in Plain English says that Matthew’s rendering says: “But Yeshua said to them, ‘Let the children come to me and do not forbid them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.’ In another spot, the Christ (via Matthew) says, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Love that.

Reminds me of Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

I think that’s the child-spirit – the place where the heart & soul can fill up because the ‘ideas of wrongdoing & rightdoing’ don’t filter out the love & light that surrounds us. And play. And fun. And learning (the fun kind).

Become like little children. Then lie down in the grass that the world is too full to talk about.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

– Brother Ian