Carry

It happened to me again, this phenomenon I call the sudden-sunny-smile-rising-from-nowhere. It happened while I was lining up like a zombie along the aisle of a 7 a.m. airplane, with only three hours sleep and in a hurry to flop into my seat and sleep. There in the cabin was this little girl by the window with her lifelike doll. With the sun on her face, she was looking at me and smiling. It was a smile that wanted me to look at what she was carrying in her little arms. For a while there, I thought it was a real baby she was carrying since the head of the doll (which even had no hair) was almost as big and round as hers.

Perhaps she was old enough to know it was just a doll she was carrying, and not the real thing that could keep you sleepless many nights. But perhaps she was also young enough to know that she could speak to it and it would speak to her. In her little universe, which was no less real, she could cuddle up to it, carry it even on an airplane journey, knowing it could go nowhere and would just flop down to the floor without her.

And so she beamed her joy at anyone who would care to see what she was carrying beside her. Despite my zombie mood, I was fortunate to have caught a slice of that beam radiating from her. It was then that I learned something again about joy and the many simple ways it disarms us.

There is joy to be found outside us, in those we choose or are asked to carry.

Pope Francis dares us: there is joy to be found in the Gospel. Joy to be found and lived and shared with each other. Joy to be drawn in carrying one another, especially those at the peripheries, at the edges of our lives. There is joy in bearing the good news of God’s offer of mercy and compassion in Jesus Christ.

During the time of consecration at mass, bishops usually take off their zucchetto (or skullcap or beanie hat), as a sign perhaps of reverence before the Blessed Sacrament. When Pope Francis stepped out of the Sri Lankan plane (to the loud cheers of the Filipino people), his white zucchetto was immediately blown away by the wind. We all let out a chuckle. The geek in me pontificated it was just a playful gust of wind.

Then again I thought and pondered: without that beanie now, Francis looked like he was presiding over a different kind of consecration. Perhaps a consecration was happening with his arrival on our shores. Perhaps it was this consecration that the multitudes came out to witness and experience. It was this re-turning of our desires to the holy, this rededication of our lives as sacred and of God’s life in us as sacred that we came out to see.

Sensing the sacred, we found joy to the point of tears upon this shepherd’s coming to our land.

We so desire to know that the sacred and the intangible are real. For all our incapacity to contain the tragic outcomes of our disordered choices, we want to be assured that holiness has the power to blunt the terror. We want to believe that mercy and compassion can withstand the blows we inflict on one another. For all our helplessness before storms that rip through our lives, we want to know that our strength is real and that we are held fast by a love that is faithful and true.

On the occasion of our shepherd’s visit and on this feast of the Sto Nino, we learn again to seek the joy that is to be found outside our fences, in those we choose or are asked to carry.

In our little universe, there is joy in carrying this Child of our devotion. There is joy in carrying him into our homes to bear him on our arms and shoulders and in our hearts. And there is even greater joy in carrying those he has cared for and borne in his heart.

For all our likeness to dolls that fray so easily at the seams and flop so readily to the floor, we so desire to be carried again in the arms of the Child. And indeed that is what the Child does when he cups that little globe of a world in his little hand.

In the morning light, look at him holding you, holding those that others would rather not carry. And you just might see a different sort of consecration, a rededication to the sacred that has always been your longing.

Be light enough as a child and you just might see the glint in his eyes, a smile that rises suddenly from nowhere else but his playful and sacred heart.