Inner Voices and Kids Movies (Feb 19-25)

Lived in: Minneapolis, MN

Reading: Invitation to Silence and Solitude (Ruth Haley Barton)

Podcast: Bema

Playing: Assassin's Creed: Revelation

Happy Saturday, beautiful people!

I'm back at my second home-away-from home: Minneapolis! I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time because... I mean, just look at the pictures! 😂

The chapel was first built in the late 1800s, and then a school was added to the back of it. Later it was all renovated for the last church that lived here, and now we are the fourth iteration on the building.

When we first climbed up into the Quasimodo-zone (aka where most of the stained glass is), I immediately felt at home. Tiny Beth first set foot in the "attic" of a cathedral when she was but the wee age of 6, and the construction was so familiar that even though we are bringing the 21st century up into those rafters, the history of old places built for Jesus still lives in the planks of timber.

What was a recent moment you've had that felt like home - or familiar to child-you? Or a recent something that ignited wonder in you?

I've been thinking about that recently. You are a time traveler! The 3-year-old you still exists inside of you along with the 7-year-old and the 16-year-old and the 25-year-old... and sometimes the voice of your child is louder than the voice of your adult.

This fact is most certainly why kids movies and books are objectively better than adult ones - because they speak to *all* of you in a meaningful way. Your child and adult get to sit together in the experience of the story. While they may each have distinct responses to the story, they're both being talked to.

And while that may be too linear of a distinction for some of our more refined concepts of self, I like it. I like feeling connected to the "childlike" reality that Jesus invites his disciples into in ways like un-adult-erated joy at the sight of falling snow or the sound of ringing church bells. And sure, there's specific conversations that have to happen at an adult-to-adult level... but all of Jesus' teachings were stories.

Stories that we teach kids first-thing in Sunday school. The same stories that teach doctorates in seminary.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s more happening in the doctorate than the Sunday school. Much of the doctorate learning, for better and for worse, is informed by the time traveler who is still in Sunday school. We can think of growing up as the process of re-teaching our inner child the most helpful ways of being in the world that we learned as adults. 

My Sunday school years taught me to be terrified of God! If I don’t un-learn and re-teach myself those lessons, I will never be able to appreciate the truth - at any age! More often than not when my inner child’s voice speaks up, it’s to the tune of fear, anger, or sorrow. So it was something of a pleasant surprise to find myself at-home in the Quasimodo-zone (despite the sketchy catwalk).

I prefer and appreciate the freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood. But I hope to take good care of the child in me so that even when I'm 80, I still crack a goofy grin when the snow starts falling, throw snowballs at my friends, and leave tiny snowmen on my car's hood. I hope I still leap up to see which church tower is ringing the bells on the hour, and laugh a little too sincerely at the bad jokes of people I like.

And I especially hope I still prefer kids movies and feel at home under church bells.

In what ways do you feel childlike? In what ways do you want to stay childlike? And where do you want to grow up?

Hope you have had a glorious week and have a lovely one awaiting you~

—Beth