Memory is a powerful phenomenon.  It can solicit strong emotions both joyful and painful.  When something is in the past, it becomes “fixed.”  Sometimes we “identify” with a memory to such a great extent that it takes on a life of its own so that it overruns us, resulting in the inability to truly live in the present at all.  We become “fixed” or rigid in a closed-ness that has trouble being open to something or someone that could totally surprise or even transform us.

This is not to say that we should not “learn from the past,” but it opens up the question of what “learning from the past” could mean.  In other words, it does not have to mean simply trying to avoid the repetition of “mistakes,” but also, and maybe even more importantly, it can mean including the past in a wisdom “way” that does not overly confine or restrict how we can experience the present.  This is a type of innocence that can approach the present in a way that doesn’t have a completely already-formed template for experience.  There is a spaciousness that indeed has a characteristic of wonder that is nourished by wisdom and openness.  It’s a way of letting people and life come to us on their own terms or as they are, rather than strictly as “we see them.”

This does not sound like an easy task, but it seems to have something to do with how we are called to experience what Jesus in the Gospel today (Mt 18:1-5, 10) refers to as the “kingdom of heaven.”

“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”

It’s the image of the “child” that Jesus seems to go back to so many times in the Gospels.  It seems that the “child” is a symbol for the innocent wonder through which we are invited to experience life.  Note that the instruction is to “turn and become like children” and “receive” each other as children.  This is not a beacon to adopt childish naiveté, but a call to a deeper innocence that comes from humble wisdom and child-like wonder.  We are called to be as children and to receive each other as children. This “kingdom of heaven,” is a relationship, and the relationship is between children.

In the same vein of Jesus’ “kingdom of heaven, Zechariah (ZEC 8: 1-8) speaks in terms of the city of Jerusalem that “shall be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets.”  How far away are we from a “kingdom of heaven” characterized by boys and girls “playing in the street?“  As we look out at our world, the “streets” seem very far from being places of playfulness.  We seek to protect our children from those “forces” that seem to threaten and as “adults” we have erected and bought into political playgrounds where grown children fight for toys of power and greed and everyone gets hurt in the process.  Our rigid “memories” justify our motives and render us violently indifferent.  We many times identify with a past that cannot forgive and presents itself as the only option for the future.

Yet, we know at a deeper level that there is another way.  There is hope.  There is a “child” waiting to be found, presented, and received.  Jesus’ simple gesture shows us this.  When the disciples asked “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

He called a child over [and] placed it in their midst.

Who is the child?  You are the child.  I am the child.  The child is anyone who can find and give a simple yet authentic expression of hope.  There is no one “way.”  There is not just one child.   I can find the “child” within myself, as can you and all of us.  We can find the “child” in each other.  Jesus turns the whole question of being “greatest” in the kingdom on its ear.  It’s the “child” – any child!  When we can identify in our lives God present in so many ways, we can “call the ‘child’ and place it in our midst.”  It can be the simplest gesture of compassionate wisdom and humble openness.  It can be any authentic expression that says “I am listening to you, you matter to me.”  It is any action where there is at least a slight hint of acknowledgement that we impact each other and because we do, we will consider that relationship in the choices that we make.  This is how the children in the kingdom “play.”

This is where the “memories” may need to break down, or be “let go.”  This is another way of identifying ourselves, not with fixed mindsets based on rigid memories, but identification through opening our hearts.  The “child” that we find and present to others – the “child” that we see placed in our midst by others – is that wonderful invitation into the present moment of relationship, which is really the only “place” where we can receive God’s love.   God has no memory.  God is the child “placed in our midst” right here and now.  When we see the child and “place” the child in our midst, we are “placing” God in each other.

Perhaps this is what Jesus is saying at the close of today’s Gospel about the “little ones,” i.e., the children:

“I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly father.”

Each “child” has its own angel who is constantly looking into the loving eyes of God.  When we find the “child” and courageously “place it in our midst,” we are participating in the loving gaze of the angels that cherish so much the “child” in their care precisely because this child is always the apple of God’s eye.

Peace,

Thomas