2025-01-31 A Meditation on Native Child

“14 And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, 15 said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” 17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”” (Matt 17:14-20 ESV)

Christ redeems us in our native guise. In our denuded humility. In our strange angular outlay, call and response, flock-like behavior, He is the ticket to ride, numero uno. For, what is man but a rather embarrassed child, what but a naked creature hiding in the woods, what but a plain-living, thematically-simple creature of the Stars?

Therefore bring on the wildness of Insight, plans both near and far, both simple and complex, both material and abstract: see, what a wise move that would be, or see what a clever setup that may be; we are plum with ideas, the best ideas owned by no exclusive club but found in the trenches, in the simpler sort of fellas and gals, who had a Vision, a Blueprint, a Sketch, a Plan. On how, just how to influence a for-now benign but soon inimical counterpart. A foreign land. A homeland compromised. The soft and silent Dying of our neighbors prelude to a Modern kind of war. And never let it be said the world rewards hard work and genius: gentler ideas are sidelined, hated, attacked, demoted, and what’s worse, their agents come about as their own worst enemies.

The ideas of that wide-eyed infant in arms, as each of us, as both lovable and intolerable, a One-Day judge will either boast in our labors or demote with a word our ambitions. We work, under some stern yoke, but also know the Trinitarian, one-minded, united sense of things: we can and do hurt even our omnipotent Father in Heaven, with our malaise or erroneous deeds; He is no harsh master, but a reasonable and loving Agent most Crowned, we His agents of that same Crown, and it really in fact Mattering how and why we live out our days.

It matters, because we are squeezed, we feel the harshness of life’s whip at our back, and the Vision then: plethoric Spread and Inculcation, enlightenment and friendship, that together spell the Overwhelming force behind us. A force overwhelming because grown as ex-laboratory, in the wild, unbelievably sustained because once, for a certain Adam and Eve, there was love. A certain platonic Love, or romantic Love. It is difficult to deny a friend to their face.

Extremely sophisticated economic plans, computer-assisted social corralling, shepherding, advanced notions of war averted but at what humanistic costs? We find and live into what we create. With a word, with the stroke of a keyboard, with a note and an Order, we find also exactly what we believed in to start out with: if in Man’s need to be curbed and corralled, then that; if in the power of Forgiveness, then that; if in life being cheap on the open market, then that. Indeed, some hasten the day of an annihilation of ninety percent of mankind, and then ask what is evolved to move forward? What of our culture will inform the next generation? What of our labors will attest to a Divine Proviso? Of work. Of labors. Of relevance. Of contribution. And the most endowed amongst us, these are the closest to mental wreckage, to self-destruction. More, the leaders amongst us, these are God’s own unique charge, while also like Moses perhaps having a sin or two that precluded them from going beyond seeing, seeing from a mountaintop the Promised Land, to see, but demure whilst one’s people go into that Land minus their head (Deut 32:51-52).

That is, to lead is to overcome ill spirits within. It is to become so pro- and so enthused about life as to bubble forth Triumphant. We lose the malaise and criticisms directed at others. We become genuinely Good People, even if the nagging fear is we were somehow from the cradle a bit more sinful than some of our peers in the pews. That is a false notion. We are here and now Forgiven, and Absolved, and Healed. It takes mighty militant prowess to assert this fact, at times, to protect this Doctrine at times, to stand tall for this Creed at times. And the ideas… these come from the ranks, and from a society both wicked but at times ascendant, upwardly-mobile, talent-seeking and successfully Rewarding the newcomer to the table. Successfully transcending the breach, eager and ambitious to go forth Boldly into the Night, accepting His love amidst our denuded bared guise, our guile originating in Him, our Mission to do one or two things ‘round here.