Catholic
Education Good teachers are specialists in opening small packages
Jonathan Kozol is Americas most passionate writer on the
subject of public education and urban youth. In 1964, amidst the civil rights
campaigns that swept the nation, he became a fourth grade teacher in the Boston
Public Schools and soon moved into the South End, an impoverished section of
the city. At that time, he was the sole white person on the street. He remained
in the neighborhood for 18 years, moving only in the 1980s after gentrification
made it impossible for the families of the children that he had known to live
there.
Over the years he has visited public schools and afterschools
that serve low-income children in a number of communities -- for a time in
Cleveland, then in San Antonio and East St. Louis and Chicago, but, beginning
around 1993, primarily in New York City in a South Bronx neighborhood known as
Mott Haven. It remains the poorest section of what has long been the poorest
congressional district in the nation. Experiences such as these were the basis
for Kozols well-known works - Death at an Early Age, Rachel and Her
Children, Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace. The books document the
towering disparities in educational experience that face urban minority youth
in comparison to wealthier, typically suburban populations. They represent a
challenge to the American conscience, and helped inspire a wave of lawsuits and
reform movements in a number of states aimed at equalizing educational
opportunity.
Kozol, 63 and Jewish, found in his encounters with children --
usually 7 to 9 years old, overwhelmingly Christian -- that their meditations on
religion entangled his mind. Their probings into questions about faith and
ethics have grown interwoven with his own. Their ideas change from year to
year, Kozol says, as they learn more about the world, and he changed, too, by
knowing them.
What follows is an excerpt from Kozols new book,
Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope (Crown
Publishers). It is based on conversations with the children of Mott Haven, most
of which took place in an Episcopalian afterschool called St. Anns. The
book is not specifically about educational equality. In the depth and
tenderness with which he presents the religious imaginations of these beautiful
children, however, Kozol implicitly makes a simple point: Should we not want
for these children what we want for our own?
Children do not die as easily as some of us
believed, Kozol writes. No matter what we do to cheat and injure
them, they light their little lights and stand there at these awful walls that
we have built and tell us that the beautiful illumination of their souls is not
so readily eclipsed as we may think.
By JONATHAN KOZOL
Birds in the morning, Thomas Merton
writes, ask God if it is time yet to begin the day. He speaks of the first
chirps of the waking birds at dawn outside the windows of his hermitage.
They begin to speak, he says, not with a fluent song
but with an awakening question that is their state at dawn. They
ask God if it is time for them to be. God, says
Merton, answers, yes. Then, one by one, they wake
up to be birds.
Tabitha Brown is 6 years old in the first grade at P.S. 30 in Mott
Haven. Her teacher says that she is a dreamer. She sits there
sometimes in her class in vague ambiguous delight as if her thoughts are in a
sweeter land than ours.
She nearly dies of shyness when I come into her class and sit down
at the table next to her. But after Ive been sitting with her for a while
she gets up and brings a small container to the table and unclasps the top to
show me that it holds two mealworms and a beetle, all of which have names.
This ones Ashley. This ones Mary-Kate. And this
one, she says, pointing to the beetle, is a boy and hes named
Michael.
Her reading skills are just beginning to emerge, although it
isnt clear how well she understands the words she reads. When I ask her
questions she gives dreamy answers. I look at her and think of sleepy cats on
windowsills complaining slightly if you try to interrupt their dreams. In a
foolish mood one day I asked her if she had a tabby cat in her genetic line.
She actually smiled when I said this and did not reject the notion out of hand.
Maybe! she said, then seemed to find this funny and went off into a
little gale of laughter that just rippled on the surface of her smile.
Sweetheart? her teacher says.
Tabitha looks up. The teacher bends over her chair and looks into
her eyes, then opens her textbook to the proper page and centers it before her
on the desk. Tabitha sits up erect and tries to concentrate.
The teacher is gentle with her. Its still morning in New
York, and very early morning in this childs life. Good teachers
dont approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with
destructive conscientiousness. Theyre not drillmasters in the military or
floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small
packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They dont yet
know whats in the box. They dont know if its breakable.
Sweetheart? the teacher says again.
Hello? says Tabitha.
Hello! the teacher says right back to her.
Eleven oclock. The children line up at the door.
Tabithas the last in line. One of the other children puts her arm around
her shoulder as they wait to leave the room. The teacher watches her, then
looks at me and smiles, and shakes her head.
Where are they going now? I ask.
Recess! she says. Then lunch.
It may be nearly lunchtime in the world but, for this pleasant
little girl, it seems as though its only a few minutes after dawn. Her
mind is yawning still. Soon enough shell brush the cobwebs from her eyes
and take a clear look at the world of vowel sounds and subtrahends and partial
products, and some bigger things that lie ahead, like state exams, but not just
now.
The children file with their teacher to the stairwell. She asks
one of the boys to hold the door, and then she starts to lead them down the
stairs. Tabitha looks around and waves goodbye to me.
I follow after them.
* * *
Jonathan? says Elio one afternoon at St. Anns
Church.
Yes? I say.
Guess what?
What?
Last night I was looking out the window of my bedroom
He says it in a prefatory way, but then he stops; and so I have to
ask him what he saw.
I saw the moon!
I try to think of something I can say about the moon.
Guess what? he says again.
What? I ask.
I saw that he was happy!
How could you tell?
I could see he has a happy mouth, he says, as if he
truly thinks about the moon the way you could think about a human being.
He asks me dozens of questions that begin in the same way: by
asking me to guess something that hes about to say. Im sure he
knows that grown-ups cannot read his mind and have no way to guess what
hes about to say. Its more like a game, or even something like a
storytellers setup, to create anticipation so that when he
finally decides to tell me what hes first asked me to guess I will be
properly impressed.
Guess what? he asks the next day when I come into the
afterschool.
What? I say.
I saw a bumblebee last night.
Where did you see it?
In my house.
What did you do?
My uncle killed him with a shoe.
A moment after that, he asks me if I know the way to draw a
picture of a shoe. I find a piece of paper and sit down and try to draw a
shoe.
Is your dog still sick? he asks me while Im
working on my picture of a shoe.
I tell him shes not really sick. She just has to rest
her leg a few more days.
Jonathan?
Yes? I say.
When shes all better, can you bring her here to
visit?
Maybe, I say carefully, because hes asked
me this before.
He looks dissatisfied by this.
How big is your dog?
Almost as big as you.
I take out my wallet and pull out a picture of my dog, a
4-year-old retriever, lying upside down in my backyard, her four paws in the
air. He studies the picture, running his finger along her stomach and her
tail.
Jonathan?
Yes? I say.
Can you show me how to draw a picture of a dog?
While Im drawing a picture of a dog, he asks, Do you
know how many ways there are to draw a picture of the sun?
No, I say. How many?
Two.
How do you know?
My teacher told me.
At my request, he draws two pictures of the sun: one of them a
circle in the middle of the page with lines that radiate out in all directions,
and one of them a curving line drawn in the corner of the page with four lines
spreading out in four directions.
I ask him if theres any other way to draw the sun.
I dont think so, he replies. A moment later,
hes forgotten this and asks if I can make a figure that looks like an
animal from a pipe cleaner.
Most of the things that seem to hold his fascination dont
remain the same for very long. Ideas pass in and out of his attention like the
fireflies he chases in the garden of the church on summer nights. Tomorrow
afternoon, when he comes racing through the doorway of the afterschool and
throws his backpack on the floor and heads directly for the kitchen to report
to Miss Katrice on what he did, or didnt do, that he was supposed to do
in school, he probably will not be thinking about bumblebees or of the
happiness or sadness of the moon.
Elios mother comes for him a little before 6 oclock
and often stays a while to chat with Mother Martha or Katrice. Her husband is,
she tells me, upstate -- which is shorthand among many people in
Mott Haven for the prison system. Elio rides six hours with her sometimes on
the bus to visit him on Saturdays or Sundays.
She told me earlier this year that Elio was diagnosed with a heart
murmur. Hes spoken of this, too, but when I asked him what it means, he
said he didnt know. Theres something wrong around my
heart, he said, and rubbed his fingers in a circle on his chest but
didnt look concerned. He has, as I have said, a round and friendly face,
and, while he isnt fat, his arms and cheeks are chubby. Some of the
mothers in the neighborhood refer to him as Pork Chop, which the
Spanish-speaking women say in Spanish, where it has a softer sound --
Chuleta -- than in English.
I asked him once how frequently he prays.
He answered, Every time I eat.
Every time? I asked.
He looked careful, as if there might be a trap for him in this,
and he began to make exceptions.
Not when I eat cookies
Not at school
Not when I eat potato chips
He does this frequently, first making an impressive statement and
then nibbling around its edges until it has been diminished just enough so that
its not exactly fibbing.
Every so often, when were by ourselves, he asks me questions
about God that take me by surprise because he asks them in apparent confidence
that I will know the answers. I know how to draw a picture of a dog and I know
things about the moon and I can multiply and I can drive a car and buy a ticket
on a plane and get from Boston to New York and back again and not get lost and
I can sometimes help to make sure that he gets a toy he wants. So I suppose
its natural for him to think that I would also know the answers to his
questions on religion.
He asks these questions to Katrice as well.
Yesterday afternoon, she says, he asked me if I
think that God is powerful. When she told him he should ask this to the
priest, he went upstairs and questioned Mother Martha.
Mother Martha told him that the Lord works miracles if we
believe in Him with all our hearts, she says. Later he came down
into the kitchen and he said, If God makes miracles, how come he never
helps me to pick up my toys?
So help me, Jonathan, she says, one hand against her
breast, I had to laugh.
As simple as some of these questions seem, however, Elio, like
many of the children here, has complicated thoughts about the relative degree
of power that God exercises in his life. He also seems to see some mutuality in
their relationship. He doesnt seem to doubt that God has power to affect
his life, but he believes that he has power too, because his own behavior, as
he seems to be convinced, can help determine whether God feels good or bad. God
is pleased -- Hes happy! -- when a child does what he is
supposed to do. But when a child misbehaves, as he expressed it to me once,
God cries.
How do you know God cries? I asked.
I can hear God crying, he replied.
You can hear him?
Yes, he said. If I do something bad
What do you do?
I go to the priest.
Who is the priest?
Mother Martha, he replied.
What do you say?
Can you please give me bless?
What does she do?
She blesses me, he said.
How does she bless you?
He looked puzzled by this question and he answered first, I
cant remember.
After a while, he said, I remember.
So I asked, What does she do?
She goes upstairs.
Why does she go upstairs?
To get the bowl, he said.
What bowl? I asked.
A shining bowl.
I asked him if he knows whats in the bowl.
Whole-fly water, he said carefully.
What does that mean?
Special water, he replied.
What makes it special?
I dont know.
What does she do with it?
She sprinkles it, he said.
Ive asked him to describe this ritual with whole-fly
water several times. Each time he describes it somewhat differently.
I asked him once, How does she sprinkle it?
With a big spoon, he replied.
Later that day, he changed the story slightly. No, he
said, With a big stick.
Another time, I asked him where the special water comes from and
he said he didnt know, but then he guessed, From underneath the
church?
A day later, I asked him the same question and he said he thought
there was a special faucet somewhere in the church.
The actual origins of the special water -- where it comes from,
how it gets into the church, and how it ends up in the pastors bowl --
are somewhat clouded in his understanding, as they are in mine as well. But his
belief in blessings and his faith that there is something special in the
whole-fly water seem not to be cloudy in the least.
If Mother Martha blessed me Id be talkin nice to
people and I wouldnt fight no more, he told me once when hed
been chastised by Katrice for fighting in the afterschool and was consigned
again to temporary isolation on the milk box in the corner of the kitchen.
He brooded about the situation, leaning on one elbow in what
seemed the deepest thought, perplexed, I guess, about the reason why he
misbehaves.
Something is making me bad, he said at last.
Make it go away.
His puzzlement and brooding seem to be assuaged by the idea of
being sprinkled with the special water in the pastors silver bowl.
Ive asked other children if they know what makes the water
holy. None of them has ever given me an answer to this question that was not
light-hearted or outrightly funny. Ive never dared to ask this question
to the priest. Ive more or less assumed the water must be given
sacramental meaning through the recitation of a prayer; but whether this is
done here at the church or somewhere else, and who exactly is allowed to do it,
I dont know.
The big stick Elio alluded to, which Ive now seen as it was
being used, is called an aspergillum and is maybe seven inches
long. The pastor dips it into the silver bowl and lifts it high above the
childrens heads, then shakes it many times in all directions. The ritual
has less solemnity than I expected. The younger children, in particular on hot
days in the summer, seem to find the sprinkling of water on their heads a
mostly physical delight. They chatter like sparrows gathered near a spray of
water from a fountain in a park. Elios tears -- his sorrow, anger, even
his contrition -- seem to be forgotten. He glows with pleasure as the water
trickles down his face. His eyes look radiant.
What does holy water mean to children?
Priests and ministers I ask give different answers, some of which
are narrowly liturgical but most of which are more informal and
impressionistic, sometimes even rather down-to-earth. Their answers often
undermine my expectation that Im in the presence of the metaphysical.
I try to ask these kinds of questions carefully because I do not
want to give offense to strict believers. Most of the ministers and priests I
talk with, happily, dont seem to be offended easily. Most of them are
more relaxed than I about these matters. Perhaps because they know Im
Jewish, they are being purposely informal, so as not to make me feel excluded
from a Christian mystery. They seem to understand, however, why I am fascinated
by these questions, and I think they also understand the hesitation that I
sometimes feel in asking for an explanation.
I once asked Elio if he could tell me what the holy water means to
him. He simply said, Its fun! Maybe thats the whole of
it; but I dont really think it is. I think my question seemed too
personal and that his answer was intended to prevent me from pursuing it too
far.
I asked Mother Martha once what it was like to wash the
childrens feet on Holy Thursday before Easter, which is done at St.
Anns, as in many Christian churches. Her answer was the same as
Elios. Fun! she replied, no more than that, no reference to
the feet of the apostles.
I asked her whether pastors are intended to feel humbled by the
ritual of washing peoples feet, because she doesnt wash only the
childrens feet, but those of grown-ups, strangers from the street, for
instance, too.
No, she said. It doesnt have that meaning
and its not like that at all.
What is the purpose of it, then? I asked.
It prepares our hearts for Easter, she said simply,
and she said again, Besides
its fun! and she would
give me no more information.
I know that it annoys her when I ask too many of these questions,
which I seem to do with a remarkable consistency, and sometimes thoughtlessly,
Im sure, on days when shes preoccupied with worries of which I am
unaware. She gets impatient with me and is forced to cut me off abruptly.
Its easy to forget how seldom she has time for speculations
of the kind with which Im able to indulge myself. Katrice once told me
that she hasnt had a holiday in seven years. Only when shes with
the children does she seem to let herself relax. Even on those days when
shes surrounded by the unexpected crises that come up repeatedly -- a
teenager arrested, a family in the neighborhood evicted from their home, a
parishioner in Lincoln Hospital about to enter surgery, a homeless man she
first met in the subway many years ago who is about to die -- the playfulness
of children such as Elio elicits playfulness in her as well. In this way I
start to understand the meaning of a priest in Massachusetts who had told me he
believes that children minister to grown-ups quite as much as grown-ups
minister to children. Holy water blesses children who receive it. But the
faces of the children also bless the one who gives it. So the healing that the
blessing brings goes back and forth
Its easy to believe that when you see the look on Mother
Marthas face as shes surrounded by the children. Of all the
things I have to do here at the church, she told me once when she was
carrying the silver bowl of holy water down the stairs into the afterschool,
this is the part I love the most.
There was so much youthfulness then in her voice. The weariness
and tension that are often in her eyes seem to have disappeared. The kids came
running when they saw her on the stairs. Katrice was watching from the side as
Mother Martha raised the silver staff. The voices of the children filled the
room the moment she began to shake the water, almost wildly, in the air.
Mother Martha! Mother Martha!
Bless me, Mother!
Me too, Mother!
You forgot me, Mother!
Bless me, Mother!
Bless me!
* * *
Lucia says her grandmother was sick last night. She doesnt
tell me what was wrong but says she fell down in the bathroom and her sister
had to help her to get up and brought her orange juice; so I assume she may be
diabetic.
When I ask her who lives with her, she says her mother, sister and
grandmother. She says her father doesnt live with them and that her
mothers father died of gunshots at the front door of her mothers
house when he was 32 years old. When I ask her what she loves most in the
world, she says, I love my heart.
She manages to get some reference to her heart, or to
Gods heart, or just to hearts in general, into a
lot of conversations.
How powerful is God? I ask.
Hes powerful to make hearts, she replies.
I asked her once to list the things she thought most beautiful in
life. She jumped right into this by saying, Hearts! When she drew
pictures of herself, her pets or people that she knew, she generally drew them
with unusually big hearts.
God needs to make hearts, she told me firmly
one day when I questioned her about this. It had an almost brazenly didactic
sound.
Stephanie, who is older than Lucia, also speaks of
Gods heart, and her own heart. When she described her mother
the first time we talked, she said, She works very hard. She does the
best she can. She tries to pay the rent.
Shes a single mother.
She gave us her heart.
I asked her once what she believed would make the world a better
place.
What would make the world better is Gods heart,
she answered. I know Gods heart is already in the world. But I
would like it if He would
push the heart more into it. Not
halfway. Push it more!
Religious writers often speak of faith with the same muscularity
of language. Struggling for selflessness is seen as a demanding occupation. God
is asked to help believers in their effort to reject the pettiness of selfish
feelings. Sometimes ministers and priests use images of grappling
or wrestling with ones emotions or ones fear of losing
faith, and they enlist God as an ally in a form of inner combat that sounds
like a physical encounter.
Stephanies image is a little less internalized.
Gods heart sounds like a gigantic pump that needs to be
positioned slightly better in the world in order to assure a better circulation
of good feelings.
Many children speak of their relationship to God in relatively
passive, acquiescent ways. Stephanie sounds more demanding. Push it
more! she says. It sounds like what a high school coach might say in
exhortation of an athlete: not an argument with God, but certainly
a friendly effort to encourage Him to do a better job.
Stephanie is a thoughtful girl with dark eyes and dark hair. She
dresses soberly, in black or brown. Some afternoons, there are dark circles
underneath her eyes. Her voice is utterly sincere. Her life is hard. Her
mothers life is hard. Her father, like Lucias father, is not
present in her home. To push the heart beyond the pettiness of hate
or envy or resentment is, in some ways, a diurnal job for both of them, as for
too many children who grow up here in these buildings where some of the
rooftops can afford a clear view of the prison colony to which so many of their
older brothers and their fathers have already been consigned. Asking God to
help a little more with this does not sound disrespectful.
Stephanies almost 11 now. Lucias only 8. When Lucia
speaks about Gods heart and draws her many cheerful pictures
in which hearts are prominent, it isnt always clear to what degree her
sentiments are still inhabiting the world of grade-school valentines. She
wanders back and forth between the saccharine and the sincerely moving. But
Stephanie is tenacious in rejecting oversweetness. She lives with far too many
serious concerns to get relief out of banality.
I asked her once, What makes you cry?
I cry
when I miss my father, she replied,
or if my mother would pass away.
Her brother, Matthew, says that when he grows up he would like to
serve in the Marines or the Army. Stephanie is two years younger than her
brother but reacts to this as if she were his mother. I want you to stay
right here, she says. I dont want you to die.
She has reason to be scared that people dear to her may die.
Some of my family members passed away, she says. My
grandmothers nephew, his mother, and his sister
Matthew explains that first the daughter and the mother died
of AIDS and then the son -- his cousin -- died from being
shot here on the street.
When people pray, says Stephanie, they dont only talk
to God. They also talk to whoever is dead in their
family.
I ask if thats the meaning that it has for her to pray.
Yes, she says. I talk to people in my family
and the angels.
I once asked her what she thought the angels looked like.
To me, she said, they have the faces of the
people that I love.
Stephanie and Matthew are two of the nicest and most honorable
children I have ever known. Their religious convictions dont seem
superficial. The imagery they use may be suggested by the words they hear from
grown-ups or the liturgies they hear in church; but they transmute these images
and make them into something of their own. Gods presence in the
world is a familiar, somewhat dulling notion, often heard in church.
Gods heart at work pumping love into the world sounds more
ambitious and, to me at least, its more consoling.
I wish I could believe in God the way children do; but there are
many days when other kinds of pumps -- the pump of ideology, the
pump of avarice, the pump of injured dignity -- appear to have a more
relentless power than the heart of God. I guess the truth is that the vividness
of Stephanies beliefs -- especially her nice idea of coaching God to do a
better job -- seems beautiful to me and yet I cant help saying to myself,
Its just a metaphor.
The effect her language has on me is not, I am afraid,
authentically religious in the way most priests or ministers would
use that word; it has to do with a desire to believe, more than belief itself.
And yet the images the children use have a compelling hold that is much more,
for me, than simply grown-up fascination with the various particulars of
juvenile belief. Their words entangle my imagination. They encircle
me somehow. When I reply to them I find Im asking questions that might
almost presuppose that I believe the things we talk about are real.
Teachers and clinicians comment on this now and then. They ask me
if the questions I ask children in this kind of interchange are calculated in
some way that will elicit their beliefs by seeming to participate
in their imaginary world -- or, as one physician put it, by appearing to
walk right into their fantasies.
I would be glad if I deserved some credit for such careful
planning, but I dont think this is true. It would be closer to the truth
to say that when a boy like Elio or a girl like Stephanie is in a thoughtful
mood and chooses to reveal a hidden place within the secret world of their
imagination or belief, it feels to me as if Ive just been handed a
gold-plated invitation to come in and visit someplace where Ive never
been before. Once I look into that room, I want to enter.
I cannot receive the bread and wine when it is offered at the
altar railing of St. Anns. The state of mind in which it is received
remains unknown to me and holds an element of mystery for my imagination. But
there are many other mysteries to be discovered in the classrooms and the
garden of an old stone church in the South Bronx, and one of the most perfect
ones is when a child, for no reason you can think of, feels the impulse to
unlock a secret from her soul. Sometimes it happens when were sitting at
a table in the afterschool, sometimes when were walking in the garden of
the church, sometimes in a whispered message through the heated tunnel of the
childs hands placed right beside my ear.
It doesnt happen often when were in a crowded room
with other kids around. It almost never happens when a number of adults are
present, or when I have just arrived here from a crowded place -- a lecture
hall, for instance, were I may have spoken in Manhattan, or a workshop with the
teachers in a public school -- and bring the sense of busy
occupation with me to St. Anns. The children sense the difference
right away. They recognize the crispness of a public mood that comes out of a
different world and may not seem to welcome private revelations.
This is true as well in visiting the homes of people in the
neighborhood. Ive come here with a friend, or several friends, perhaps at
night after weve stopped somewhere for dinner, and it frequently has
altered almost everything. Its not so much that people who have known me
for a time talk differently when there are other people with us in the room;
its more the case that I am different in some way of which Im not
aware but which is evident to someone who already knows me well. Its as
if, without needing to say it, weve agreed that this will be a different,
less important, kind of evening and that we will save the things that matter
for the next time I am here when there will be only the two of us.
A nun I know whos worked for years with families in poor
neighborhoods speaks of a certain mood of unexamined receptivity,
which does not mean, she says, merely the willingness to listen carefully or
patiently. It has to do with quieting your state of mind as you
prepare to listen. It means not pressing on too fast to get to something
that you think you need to get to as the purpose or
objective of the conversation, which is what a journalist must
usually do. There is a difference between getting and
receiving.
The distinction comes to mind when Ive been visiting in
public schools. Im not usually aware of being in a public
state of mind, or a more acquisitive or less receptive
state of mind, when Im at school, but possibly I am. I do know that the
way the St. Anns children talk with me in class is generally very
different from the way they speak with me in quiet situations.
When I visit in their class, the children often seem tremendously
excited -- its a big surprise for children to see someone they
already know from outside school right there beside their teacher in the
classroom. Theyre always friendly and they answer me politely; but their
answers, at least during class discussions, lack the pungent authenticity
theyd have if we were in a far less public situation. They seem more like
generic answers, like set pieces, or performances, that are the
products of my unintended choreography.
Even children who, in other situations, have expressed the most
engagingly eccentric points of view can start to churn out rather dull
pronouncements and high-minded observations about love and
goodness, faith in God and inter-racial
understanding when I question them in front of the full class at school:
unoriginal but honorable sentiments expressed in styles that are not uniquely
theirs, as if they feel somehow that this is what I am soliciting.
It may seem obvious that school is not the same as
church and that a child in a group is likely to sound different
from the way she does when shes alone or only with close friends; but I
think the role and state of mind of the adult are factors, too. The children
are in a different state of mind when theyre at school; but I am
different also and, even if I do not realize this, the children seem to sense
it every time.
Theres something about silence and not being in a hurry and
not being in an overly convivial or overly determinative state of mind, or one
thats loaded with too much intentionality, and something also about being
unaccompanied, that seems to give a message about receptivity. I also think
that children need some reason to believe that what they say will not be heard
too clinically, or journalistically, or put to use too rapidly, and
that the gift they give us will be taken into hands that will not seize too
fast upon their confidence, or grasp too firmly, or attempt to push an idea to
completion when it needs to be left open, incomplete, and tentative a
while.
The greatest fear I have in talking with a boy or girl as
sensitive as Elio or Stephanie is of an unintended intellectual invasiveness,
of entering not just the room to which I was invited, but the next room too,
and feeling suddenly that I have stepped into a place where I do not belong and
maybe dont deserve to be. I think of the image of a place or
room because so many of the dreams and longings and religious
thoughts the children share with me have so much structural completeness! They
seem like houses, dwelling-places, or small rooms within a complicated
building. The space within them always feels mysterious.
I think of a 10-year-old I met in 1993 who knew my beagle had just
died and reassured me that Id have the right to visit her on
weekends when (or if!) I went to heaven and who also told me that
you dont need money to buy what you need after you die,
because in heaven you can pay for things you need with smiles.
Faith, says the author of the letter to Hebrews, is the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. A friend
of mine in the newspaper world who views religion skeptically, and seems
embarrassed when I speak of the beliefs of children in a way that sounds too
credulous to him, does what he can to credit me with a degree of rationality.
Its nice the way you play along with them, he says --
Im sure, not meaning to be condescending. Its probably good
for kids like them that they believe these things because there may be little
else they can believe in.
It doesnt seem that way to me at all. When children speak of
things not seen but which they are convinced they see, I want to
see them too. Theologians use a Latinate, and rather fancy, term,
prevenient grace, to speak of unfamiliar moments such as these.
A flash of Easter is the simpler and less imposing way that one
religious writer speaks about these moments. I think of them like tiny objects
of great value that youd never find in any store or any library or any
university.
I would not want to suggest by this in any way at all, even the
most indirect, that all these little kids, as they spin out their wishes,
hopes, and prayers, are actually minor theologians in disguise. The tendency to
seize upon a childs tender words and lift them to the level of prophetic
truth is a familiar risk for those of us who like to be with children and enjoy
their conversation. Some children do create their own diminutive theologies;
but they are children and not child theologians, and it adds no
halo to the head of a real child to suggest there is something magisterial in
all of this. I simply think the gifts of faith and fantasy they bring to us are
often beautiful and wise in their simplicity. To me, these are the bread and
wine; and I am always thankful to receive them.
* * *
For weeks, Ive promised Pineapple Id visit her at
home. Finally, one Saturday in May when I am in the neighborhood, I have a
chance to keep my promise.
Her hospitable sweetness is surprisingly mature. Her mother is
out; shes at a neighbors birthday party with her sisters. Her aunt
is resting in one of the other rooms. She leads me to a sofa in the living room
and pats the cushion where she seems to think Ill be most
comfortable.
Jonathan, she says when I seem hesitant to sit,
please make yourself at home.
As soon as I sit down, she asks if I would like something to
drink. When I say yes, she goes first to a liquor cabinet and, opening the door
to show me an unopened bottle of Courvoisier and several miniatures of Scotch,
she asks what I would like. When I say Id rather have something that is
not alcoholic, she goes to the kitchen, where she chooses a tall glass that has
a Big Bird decal on the side, fills the glass with greenish-yellow
Kool-Aid, finds a napkin and a coaster, and then brings it out and sets it down
on the table next to me.
Are you going to sit down with me? I ask.
She sits cross-legged on the floor in front of me. Her arms
folded, her stomach sticking out, her multitudinous white barrettes arranged
with artistry throughout her braided hair, she nods at me as I lift the glass,
as if shes absolutely satisfied with this arrangement; but she recognizes
that I feel a little shy and so she tells me for a second time, Please
make yourself at home.
I havent had Kool-Aid in 50 years. It tastes delicious. I
drink it, almost all, in one long gulp. Shes 8 years old. We talk of this
and that. She later brings me to one of the other rooms so I can see her
bedroom, where there are two bunk beds in which she and her two sisters sleep.
The mattresses are covered with thick quilts. On one of the beds, which she
tells me is hers, a family of animals is tucked beneath the quilt and linen
where its folded over.
Before I leave she asks if I would like another glass of
Kool-Aid.
Yes, I say.
She brings me into the kitchen this time, where there are more
animals with friendly faces stuck by magnets to the white refrigerator door.
When I leave, she comes out to the landing in the hallway and looks down as I
look up at every landing, waving to me with one of her hands.
I had asthma earlier this afternoon and had been worried about
climbing the five flights to Pineapples apartment. But once I arrived, I
forgot that I was feeling bad, and by the time I leave, the pressure in my
chest is gone completely. Heading down the stairs to the front door, I want to
cheer out loud and tell the good news to the people on the sidewalk:
Guess what? Im all better! I can breathe!
A man sitting beside me in a Pentecostal service at a storefront
on Brook Avenue once said to me, Youre not from the
neighborhood. When I said no, he shook my hand and said I should feel
welcome. If you were lookin to get you some church, you came to the
right place.
That phrase -- get you some church -- stayed in my
mind, because it sounded like good food you were being offered and could count
on if you really wanted to be filled. I thought of those words again as I was
leaving Pineapples apartment. Do not be conformed to this
world, said Paul in his epistle to the little band of Christians who had
taken domicile in Rome, but be transformed. Much of the way I see
the world has been transformed by knowing children like Pineapple.
National Catholic Reporter, March 24,
2000
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