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the jesus of the cry room

4 Comments

Ironically, they’re the easiest scenes in the Gospels for me to skip over.

Yesterday it was an episode from Mark. Arguing disciples, who’s the greatest, elbowing each other on the road to Capernaum like bickering brothers: nuh-uh, I’m the favorite. Exasperated Jesus, here’s the least, plunking down the kid in the middle like an exasperated parent: why can’t you be more like this one?

And every time, deaf and blind me, paying half-attention in the pew with my own squirming least, I miss the message, too. My eyes glaze over; my ears lull to auto-pilot. I’ve heard this one a million times; let the little children come to me; the kingdom of heaven belongs to them; yawn.

Until yesterday, I’d never thought about the shocking fact of Jesus noticing – to say nothing of embracing – a child.

But at Sunday Mass, while my youngest shrieked in my arms, flailing with frustration, lunging for a nap nowhere to be found, and I missed most of the Gospel as I plotted my exit from the pew pre-homily, before the hollering protest drowned out the priest entirely, I had a brief moment of clarity. Irony’s lightning bolt. Here I am, embracing the same child that Christ put his arms around. And I’m planning to whisk him out of the assembly ASAP so he doesn’t disturb the patient prayers around us any further.

(I still left. Amen, amen I say to you – that kid was CRANKY.)

But as we gently paced the gathering space, watching through windows at the quieter crowd within, I tasted the irony. I ignored the homily I couldn’t hear anyway and entered the scene.

I pictured Jesus, sweaty and grimy from the journey, annoyed with his quibbling friends, troubled at their stubborn hearts. I wondered about the child he chose to put his arms around.

Did the baby squirm in his arms, lunging for his mother? Did the toddler leak while she sat on his lap? Did the boy wrinkle up his nose and announce, to his parents’ mortification, that this man smells funny?

Or did the child cuddle in Christ’s arms with delight? Was Jesus like the favorite uncle, the one who never had kids of his own but never hesitated to get down on the floor and wrestle with the little ones, who always knew how to get a grin and a giggle?

I’m embarrassed to admit that for years I’ve slid over these passages like a worn-out children’s Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke. Did I think they were simply moments when Jesus turned into a sap? That they were Hallmark sentiments or photo-ops for centuries of kitschy artists to paint in fuzzy pastels?

Even after I took graduate courses in Scripture, I still never realized the shattering shock of this scene. I learned lots of theological analysis of what the child means for the reordering of societal and familial structures in the reign of God. But I never thought about the kid on Christ’s lap.

Until I held the one that exasperated me, who smelled of wet diaper and oatmeal-smeared hair, who crawled too fast to contain in a chair, who babbled too loud to pray in a pew.

I tried to hold him with Christ arms instead of my tired own. I saw, for the first time, the shock of a savior scooping up the smallest.

And I realized that this was exactly the upside-down-ness of the Kingdom. He’s in.

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  1. Barb says

    27 September 2012 at 8:48 am

    I am a catechist for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at our Catholic School . At the end of our atrium class, we gather around the prayer table with the students. I was with the 5 year old children yesterday. I read the passage from Luke18:15-17. I set up the reading first explaining to the children that there were many, many people who would follow Jesus to hear Him speak…and one day there were mothers bringing their infants to him to be touched by them. ( As a mother just the thought of that gives me goosebumps 🙂 Then I shared that Jesus’s disciples “rebuked” ( I explained what “rebuked” meant ) the mothers who were bringing the infants and children to HIm… But, it was Jesus who said, “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them… for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” You could have heard a pin drop … as these precious kindergartners listened to how precious THEY were to Jesus…and how wrong the apostles were that day. I love the idea of “being in the moment” when reading or hearing scripture. Of placing ourselves as much as we can in Jesus’s world when he walked the earth… it makes it more real … not just for our children… but, for us as adults too : ) Thank you for sharing your insight and for such a wonderful blog. It’s a blessing.

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      27 September 2012 at 9:24 pm

      Barb, I love your story! It is incredible how Scripture can come alive when we enter it the right way. I’m in awe of how Catechesis of the Good Sheperd does that for children. I pray it can be part of my kids’ journey, too.

      Reply
  2. Barb says

    27 September 2012 at 8:51 am

    Sorry…I meant to write, ” to Him to be touched by Him ” (…not them…)

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. sacrament, interrupted | mothering spirit says:
    22 July 2013 at 7:19 am

    […] We need the ritual, the rite, the action, the sign. We need it spoken to us personally, like Christ pulling one child onto his lap, and communally, as a church trying to re-member ourselves back into one […]

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

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We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

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he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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