I tell you, unless a person receives the kingdom of God like a child, they will not enter it at all.”
welcome
keys welcomeassurance
begets assurancepresence
reveals presencechild
plays with childenter
gladly enter
Here is the reality of our situation: Without a welcoming curiosity we miss the exploration of a larger space and time.
Recognizing that children are no more uniform than any other group, there have been numerous interpretations given of what a child-like behavior is that might be helpful to adults.
It may well be an intuited response to danger we have covered over with a descriptor of being “shy”. It can as likely be a devil-may-care attitude that leads a child into danger all on their own. Whatever the developing personality or learned behavior a child may have as a first response to the world around, there are two components that rise to mind here.
The first is a willingness to step toward a next unknown. This is the learning process of observation and experimenting. G*D’s presence usually comes in the context of an unknown, as a hint of tomorrow here in the middle of today. At this time and place there are all manner of things and events that are going extinct. Everything is passing away before our very eyes. At this same time and same place there are all manner of signs and revelations which will take on form and function in a next moment or seven generations down-the-line.
This moment of passing away and rising up can be entirely oblivious to us as we fixate on concretizing a life lesson into one or another, all too soon obsolete, doctrine or peeling back more layers of an onion than it has in any search for its basic essence. More helpful is a playful engagement with whatever new possibility is teasing us from just the other side of the horizon.
Welcoming the presence of G*D engages us as a beloved partner in creating an alternative world where there are multiple ways of making peace but only one way to make war instead of our current game of finding a gun hidden inside everything.
It is the perennial learner who will enter a next iteration of reality, what we now call a future heaven. How will “the nature and the name of Love” next reveal itself? Ready, Set, Explore!