Sunday, February 9, 2014

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Mark 10:13-22

The radio program Snap Judgment recently played a story about the Desserich family and it illustrates so well the truth of today’s Gospel. I’ll summarize here:

Five-year old Elena knew exactly what she wanted to do when she was older.  She also knew that she had only one year to do it.  She was dying of cancer and what she wanted to do was remind her parents, Keith and Brooke, and her younger sister, Grace, just how much she loved them.

Here father shares that Elena was a strong, articulate and intelligent child. She fiercely cared for her younger sister, almost to the point of being a second mother. She had a distinctively confident way of walking and when she began to stumble, they knew something wasn’t right. She was later diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and the only ones who survive, the doctors said, were those who were misdiagnosed.

Keith and Brooke never told their daughter the doctor’s prognosis. But she knew and she began to prepare, not for her own death, but for her family’s loss.  After she was gone, Keith and Brooke began finding notes around the house. At first, when a note fell from a book pulled from the shelf, they thought it was one they had forgotten. Perhaps one written at school that they shoved away in the book they were reading at the time. But when the notes began turning up everywhere: in the furniture, in the dishes, written on the hotel stationary of places they had stayed during her year of treatments, they knew she had planned them all along.

The notes were addressed variously to her mom, to her dad or to her sister, and they all have the same theme: I love you. Both Keith and Brooke carry one note that they haven’t yet opened. He found his in his office desk. She found hers in her briefcase. They carry them as tangible reminders of their daughter’s love.  

I have to admit that this story moves me. I am moved by Elena’s simple, yet radical, openness to life in the face of her own death. I am inspired by her ability to be for others even as she suffered. I am fascinated by her attentive creativity.  

When you listen to the story, you can tell Elena’s father adored his daughter. And it seems to me that Elena had what all treasured children have: an unconscious, immediate sense of being loved. She depended on her family in simple trust. She hadn’t yet “matured” into a life of “independence” and “self-sufficiency.” 

I can’t help but think that when Jesus welcomed the children, he welcomed them for this same radical openness and simple trust. He recognized in them something he recognized in himself: he knew he was Beloved and so did they. Because both he and they were bathed in love, it was easy for them to give it away. 

And I can’t help but notice the stark contrast with the rich young ruler. In his position of status and affluence, he had forgotten how to love. He came to ask Jesus for advice. Maybe he had forgotten how to love because he had forgotten what it’s like to be a child and to find security not in power or wealth but in loving relationships.

I often pray that I could be more like Elena and less like the rich young ruler. I pray that I could re-capture my own spirit of child-like love and trust. And I pray that I would be captured by the vision of what God is up to in the world: a mission of divine sharing with all creation. I pray that we could all be captured by the kind of child-like wonder that Abraham Joshua Heschel describes: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” And, then, from this place of amazement, continue in a life of simple kindness and social justice. 

I have some notes to write. 

-David Shumaker

+++ You can find Keith’s story of Elena on the website www.snapjudgment.org/found. +++