A nine-year-old tends to have strange ideas about what’s fun, really fun.
What else am I to make of the look of delight on his face? This grandson of mine, buried up to his belly-button in sand?
A project entirely of his own doing, this was: to make his legs disappear beneath the damp gritty silica that borders the Bourbeuse River near his great-great-grandfather’s farm in Franklin County.
I can think of few things I’d less rather do than wallow in such a bog. But the feat fascinated Grandson #1 nearly as much as it mortified me. He was Living Large beneath the immobilizing load, no doubt gratified by the wonder and scandal it evoked in me.
Oh, dear.
Have I really grown so old, so set in my ways, that I’d never even consider having fun in such an unorthodox way? “C’mon, Gramps … live a little!” my Grandson’s example said to me on Labor Day. And perhaps there’s a grain of wisdom in his youthful counsel. Perhaps.
Of course, when you reach my age, you’ve learned a thing or two about first calculating the cost. That’s real wisdom, you tell yourself. How are we going to get out of this mess? And who’s gonna clean it up afterwards?
Sure, you tell yourself you’re wise. But then along comes the Holy Spirit, offering a slightly different twist on life. “…the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns,” we hear in this week’s first reading from the Book of Wisdom. Don’t get bogged down in material things, the Spirit says. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve got everything under control. For “[w]ho can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends?”
And somehow, meditating on the Spirit’s wisdom makes it a bit easier to digest the unappetizing invitation Jesus extends in this week’s gospel. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple,” Jesus says. “[And] anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? But what do we know, really? And what, perhaps, can a nine-year-old’s delight teach us about how little we know?
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 