placing the child in the midst of them

Caleb followed along in the prayer book and in the hymnal during the service today. I’m not sure how he knew to grab the prayer book, turn to page 355 and begin. Perhaps L told him. But as he sang along with “O love, how deep, how broad, how high”, she and I looked at each other and at him with amazed and happy looks.

After the service was over, he filed out with everyone else to shake Father Jody’s hand. Today was Jody’s first day as rector, and perhaps Caleb wanted to put him through his paces. I am told that Caleb asked him whether it is the case that the Eucharistic wine was, in fact, the blood of Jesus, and also whether by drinking it we were given eternal life.

Caleb’s inquisitiveness—and that of all children who ask spiritual question—ought to encourage parents to have faith despite frustration. Make no mistake: bringing your kids to church is a slow and tedious martyrdom. And it is a trial, too, for those who sit near them. Children are a crimp on the “worship experience.” Caleb, for example, has been known to talk and chatter through the entire service—including the sermon, completely oblivious to the world around him. Another little girl in our church managed to roll a dime four pews forward during the service last Sunday. And I spent one service a few months ago being eyed by pew-climbing spy in the form of Clone Wars’ General Grievous in the hands of a little boy. Oh, the disciples weren’t acting uncharacteristically when they turned the children aside. They were acting like adults engaged in the serious business of turning the tables on tyrant Rome. Children were a distraction.

Nevertheless, Caleb and the rest are listening. I don’t know how they are listening. When I was a child I remember attending a revival meeting in the evening with my parents. We attended a Christian church, where “Christian” is a frontier denomination whose particulars no doubt cluster about the usual ones: mode of worship, belief in free will, or a question about the height of the wall that separates who is out and who in. At any rate, it was quite hot and dark in the room, and the pastor was leading his audience on for long minutes after he’d adopted a concluding key a half-hour before. I was lying down on the red cloth of a pew and the man yells out, “Raise your hand if you are ready! Raise your hand!” And so I did. “Look at that kid back there raising his hand,” he said, to general guffaws. Kids are, like I was, trying to figure this whole thing out. They’re ready to be adults, but are naïve enough to ask or act at times when the adults all know no action is required.