Today’s find: Jailbreak

I witnessed a bit of a jailbreak yesterday, a feat almost nine years in the making.

A portion of the family – including Grandsons – gathered at our place for an early Father’s Day celebration. And as I fired up the grill, I noticed a “first-time-for-me” phenomenon unfolding down below on the basketball pad: Grandson #1 dribbling (semi-expertly) and then launching shots (with a full-size basketball no less) that had half a chance at actually going in.

The Little Dude has been working on his game, I mused. And (horrors!) he’s growing up – fast! 

He’s not really even a “Little Dude” anymore. He’s broken the bonds of Rug Rat … to become a full-fledged Yard Ape. And Grandson #2, in truth, ain’t that far behind him. 

Grade school will do that to a kid. Jailbreak! They start learning from (and listening to) Sources of Wisdom outside their immediate circle of family. They keep growing, too, despite a Gramps’ best effort to tamp this whole thing down.

But I have much more I want to tell you, I want to protest – before the Grands get to the point where they tune me out entirely. 

Maybe I’ll get the chance. Maybe Love … a Big Big Love, one they’ve always known deep in their beings … will buy me that chance to keep at least a portion of their attention … before a cacophony of worldly enticements ensnares their glorious little hearts.

I think about this desire, and in the thinking I realize that it is teaching me. Teaching me, perhaps, something important about the nature of God. About the nature of God’s love for me, for us.

We hear it today as we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. We hear about God’s desire … for relationship. Jesus says it, straight up, in the gospel passage: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”

These are not the words of someone who intends to cut-and-run. Rather, like a master organist, Jesus promises to pull out all the stops … but maybe just a stop-at-a-time. He promises to send his Holy Spirit, and together they will reveal God’s very Self to us. It is a Self that gives, a Self that loves, a Self that is anything but selfish.

It’s such a hard message to detect, though, isn’t it? God tends to whisper this desire for relationship, this desire to dwell within me. And the whisper can easily be drowned out by a world that glorifies drones and missiles and enriched uranium and bitcoin and celebrity and championships and apps and trophies and plastic and all manner of excess.

We grownups, we don’t even realize half the time that we are in jail … that we desperately need to be liberated from all our idols.

And so, God gives us Love – gives us (if we’re lucky) the Big Big Love of a granddaughter and grandsons, and the parents who bore them.

God gives us Love (which is to say: God’s very Self) … and then keeps on whispering … “I have so much more to tell you.”

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS