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| "Madonna Child John" by Brian Kershisnik |
I sat on the front porch contemplating the songlessness of entropy,
the way the weeds creep and crush and encroach on my garden, my lawn, my
flowerbed; the way the messes multiply and replenish. There’s a certain dark miracle
there in the relentless march of chaos and mayhem. It sinks into the soul
sometimes, too.
I looked up to see the stumbling, toddling, mad amble of my
beautifully fat fourth-born making her way across the grass, barefoot as a
discalced Carmelite, holding the hands of her two oldest siblings who gazed at
her with reverent attentiveness. This small child has oceans in her blue eyes.
There are constellations and congregations of solemn clouds swirling behind her
piercing glance. She communicates much without words. There are worlds in her
seeric eyes.
My third-born son followed behind the procession, bent
toward the small prophetess. Ellie crouched at the edge of the green lawn to examine
a rock. She made a wondering sound. Lydia, Emerson, and Oliver all joined her
in her genuflection toward the stone. They each touched it in turn with gentle
affection. Then Ellie shot up and pointed excitedly. The neighbor dog had come
wandering into her consciousness. The children admired with her. She bent for a
snail. They dropped to their knees. And I wanted to join them. Isaiah says that
in the Millennium, when there is peace among all creatures, when the wolf and
the lamb bound recklessly and joyously united down the grassy slopes and the
lion and the ox share a communal feast of straw, that a little child shall lead
them. I think it was Boyd K. Packer who said that every time a child is
born the world is renewed in innocence.
This small baby comes angling toward me with her dimpled
smile and her wry laugh and her knowing, ancient eyes, carrying something that
looks like a bag full of translucent shards of colored light, and I think that
this is what it will take for the world to be born again. We will have to trust
to the eyes of a little child to walk into the new country of wonder and awe
and magic that God has in His infinite generosity and imagination prepared for
us. We will have to become such astonished, bright-eyed creatures ourselves.
And I think I will like that world, too.
