Daisy Chains

"No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange." -William Sydney Porter

I guess a lot of people would think it odd that I spent three hours today browsing through the children's section of our University Library.(or, perhaps, as I do, think it odd that a University has a children's section at all! :-) )

I KNOW that a lot of people thought it odd, because I got some extremely strange looks from students at tables, and even passers by. Personally, I maintain that, considering the general eccentricity of your average college student, they should not begrudge me a few hours with Child and Young Adult literature during the peak of mid-term frenzy.
But, be that as it may, to put the concerns of these narrow-minded folk at rest, I will hasten to explain that my hours with Amelia Bedelia, and Bill Peet, and a staggering selection of 'folk tales from around the world', etcetera were for the purpose of completing a mid-term in my TESOL class- I was hunting down read aloud fodder for my 22 imaginary second graders, in order to finish designing a lesson plan on Critical Thinking and Reading strategies.

So, I see nothing to peculiar in the fact that I spent my afternoon with children's books, in the library. Nor in the fact that I enjoyed it. But, even I have to confess that there is something a bit unusual in the fact that a large portion of this time was spent curled up between two aisles of books crying.

There is a certain, rather morbid class of books which people are always writing for children, which probably has some technical name of which I am unaware. Were I going to name it, I think I would title this genre something lke 'A Child's Garden of Coping Strategies'. Maybe you have never seen these books? I will try to explain.
I encountered them for the first time at the age of or seven or eight, in the Lee's Summit library, where I was wandering about after a reading program.
As I crawled blissfully from shelf to shelf, a title caught my eye. I pulled the book out, and began to thumb through it. I was riveted, with a sort of shocked fascination. It was horrible! All about a little girl whose parents fight, and then get divorced, and how she has to live traveling between two houses. Of course I knew, in a sort of vague, theoretical way, what divorce was- but this was just AWFUL! How could things like that happen?
So, trembling, I shoved the 'awful book' away, and pulled something else from the shelf. That's when I discovered the 'coping genre'. Because the next book was supposed to teach children about death, and help them come to terms with it. When I looked more carefully, I found that this whole section of shelf was full of books about children dealing with abuse, divorce, lost pets, grandparents with alzheimers, loneliness, bullying, betrayal, sickness, etcetera.
"Weird." thought I, and moved off in search of fairy tales, and animal stories, pretty pictures, and adventure- REAL children's books.
After that, I nearly forgot about the 'coping books'
Reading to siblings at the library, I occasionally saw them, but we always passed them by.
Until I blundered into the Children's Section today.

It started with a shabby brown book entitled 'No Time for Me', about a little boy named Tim. Tim's parents both work outside the home, and never have time for him and his sister Lydia. But they have promised to take him to a baseball game on his birthday, and he is counting down the days. Until they tell him that they've decided to go on a business trip to Hawaii instead! Tim, unsurprisingly, has a meltdown. The rest of the story chronicles Tim's attempts to deal with the letdown, and his parents' (belated) attempt to make amends. His father (thinks) he (might) be able to eat breakfast with Tim on Wednesdays. His mother agrees to come home an hour earlier (most) Thursdays. Tim takes what he can get.
I think there's supposed to be a happy ending, but I couldn't find it.

The next book was even worse. It's about a little boy who hates Father's day. Why does he hate Father's day? He hasn't got a father. This one is memorable, mainly because so wrenchingly pathetic.
It tells, in first person, the story of a little boy making a Father's Day project in class, for a father who left so long ago he can't remember. By the time I reached the third page, I was crying. The child's teacher is insisting that everyone has a father, and that the little boy should just mail the card he's decorating. And the child points out that he doesn't know where his father lives.
He adds wistfully to himself,
"Of course, everyone has a father. They tell me I have a father. But I wish I had a father I could KNOW."
Everything in my heart was shouting "Oh, but you DO! You do!"
The book ends with the child putting this father's day card away with all the others he's made over the years, concluding,
"Maybe someday he'll see them, and know that I love him."
The moral of the story, according to said 'coping book'?
'It's ok to be different.'
Even as a secular coping strategy, that's pretty lame.

Which is maybe why I couldn't stop crying once I'd started. Because, for that child, and for so many others, there is a well-intentioned but blind author attempting to apply a band-aid to the unmendable depths of the human heart, and no one- NO ONE to open sympathetic arms, to share the miraculous truths of Psalm 68:5 and 1 John 3:1

"A father to the fatherless... is God in his holy dwelling."

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"

I continued to read- not just the infamous experiments in applied child psychology, but the ordinary children's books. There were lovely, laughing ones, (Did you know that Tolkein wrote and illustrated an enchantingly ridiculous story called 'Mr. Bliss'?) and sweet ones, and folk tales, and illustrations in everything from watercolor to collage. Many brought back memories- we are an extremely book oriented family, and read EVERYTHING aloud together, so I grew up on a wide variety of children's lit.
Some, too, were just sickening. Like 'Daddy Has A Roomate', about a little boy whose parents get divorced so his Dad can move in with his boyfriend. Worried? Don't be. It's ok (the book tells us) because Mommy and Daddy and the Boyfriend all agree that this new word 'gay' they are trying to explain to the child, means just an 'extra kind of love', and 'love is the best thing in the world.'
By the time I'd reached this point, I was sick and dizzy with a sort of headache-induced nausea. Palmistry, reincarnation, witchcraft, animism, ghosts, idolatry, Humanism, Buddhism- was there ANYTHING not being fed to little minds?
I tried to imagine the confusion facing a child who attempted to find answers about life in such a place. And television, the more common source of information, is even worse!
But, then, where else can they go? To parents who never learned? To teachers? To peers, equally confused? Will no one stand in the gap? No one?

Here's what Amy Carmichael had to say:
"...At my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom... only unfathomable depths... Then I saw forms of people moving single-file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms, and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step... it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!
Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.
Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge... I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned...
Then I saw, like the picture of peace, a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them, and they thought it rather a vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. "Why should you get so excited about it?...You haven't finished your daisy chains. It would be really selfish," they said, "to leave us to finish the work alone." ...
One child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; the child clung convulsively, and it called, but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass...
Then came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was on me..." -Amy Carmichael

Daisy Chains... are so many things. Why is it that the Church in the U.S. is, as a whole, more concerned with new carpet, and lighting fixtures, and the latest sound systems, than it is with discipleship, with discipline, with the sacrificial commitment to reach human souls? Why is it that your average Christian is expending so much of his energy agonizing over political battles, and elections won or lost (or even football games won or lost!), yet gives so little of himself to battling principalities and powers, and winning human souls? Why is it that in America, the wealthiest nation in the world, we have money for new cars, exquisite home decor, and namebrand clothing, yet can only spare a few dollars, if that, to support those who DO wish to go out and serve? Why do we have time for televisions, and computers, and magazines, and newspapers, and a staggering range of hobbies, yet only moments to spare for studying God's Word- much less for actually teaching it to others- even less for building the relationships, for investing the interest and affection which make God's love a visible reality?

It's a hard question to ask- and, although sometimes I'm desperately frustrated- long to grab the American church by the shoulders and SHAKE it into wakefulness- the truth is, I'm equally guilty. As sinful people in a broken world, none of us will ever do 'enough'. I'm willing to bet that Peter and Paul and all the rest of the Apostles made mistakes, missed opportunities, lost focus, and got sucked into the seductive pastime of daisy-chain weaving at some points in their lives. And those guys were SOLD OUT to God. So, our chances at perfection are somewhere below nill.

BUT WHY ARE WE SO SATISFIED WITH THAT?

I sat weeping among the children's books because of all of the loose ends in the picture the world was painting, because of the crushing weight of those millions of lives, shattered from their very beginning, because I sit in class with those children every day, and pass them in the halls, and for most of them, it's too late. Oh, I know- it's never over till you're dead. But there is a spiritual deadness and hardness that increases over time. And in so many of the people around me, I see that a window which was open ten, fifteen years ago, when they were facing the world wide open and full of questions, is now tightly shut. Who can say when, if ever, it will open again?

But I was also crying because of the deep, heartbreaking realization, coming yet again, that my own hands, on a day to day basis, are filled with daisies, and my fingers, with the force of long habit, are weaving stems and leaves in and out, in and out, as though nothing on earth were more important! I cried for the thought of that child, falling into endless emptiness with nothing but a grass-tuft to cling to, which, had I been more faithful, might have stood safely on the solid ground of Truth. There is no balm for this kind of ache. But, neither is there any 'if' in God's Kingdom!
There are only the present and the future. What will I make of them? What will you?
It remains to be seen. I pray that God will show us the gaps to stand in, subordinate the thundering, importunate 'WHERE?' to the stern discipline of 'HERE!', wherever 'Here' is.
What terrifying, wonderful responsibility it is to guard the gaps for little folk whose "...feet are so uncertain and feeble...", to stand where "...the ways are so steep and strange.", to serve a God who said: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."(Matt 11:25) "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14) "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise." (Matt 21:16).
I cannot begin to comprehend it! We follow a King who not only

'clothed Himself in vile man's flesh that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe." (Donne), but who

"...took the children in his arms..." (Mark 10:16)

Most days, I just feel a huge aching in my heart because MY arms aren't big enough. I can't reach far enough. I want to hold them all, shelter them all, and instead, am constantly letting go, watching their lives brush against mine, and slide away again.
And yet, in Texas, shattered by the pain of 'deserting' a truly special group of kids, and not merely saying goodbye, but of sending them back at the end of the week into brutally abusive and hopeless homes, I realized that even though my arms AREN'T enough, even though I can't protect them, can't train them, can't LOVE them the way I long to, HIS arms are eternal and limitless- His power to protect, His faithfulness to shape and instruct, His love and comfort are an unfailing source.
And even though I only have a week, or five days to impact them, HE has a lifetime!

It seems to me, in this precious moment of clarity, that for a God not merely so mighty, but so tender, we can afford to let go of our 'daisy chains'; the thousand everyday, useless things that fall to ashes, or less, at the least searching glance from Eternity, and hold to- or rather be held BY- the One "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 2:3) [You will NOT find 'the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in the Children's section of MWSU's library.]

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever." (Romans 11:36)