Grappling With Divinity

I walked my daughter and her cousins to the playground this afternoon. While they played, I sat on a bench and read Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser, a book that my advisor recommended I read prior to starting my master’s degree this coming fall. As I read, they started walking across the field from the playground to the swing-set. I moved as well so that I could keep an eye on them.

The swing-set is in a big, open field so there was nothing for me to really worry about, so I focused on my book and just let them play. I could hear them talking and laughing while they swung. Quite a bit of time passed before I looked up, and when I did, I noticed something.

They were perfectly content to just swing and talk and laugh like the rest of the world didn’t exist. They had no phones, no tablets, and no worries. They were present, playful, and happy, and, in my own way, I was right there with them, present, playful, and happy.

As I watched them, it brought me back to my own childhood and I could feel what they were feeling. It was bittersweet. I was overwhelmed with joy for the fun I had in my youth with my brother and my friends, swinging on swings, riding bikes, skateboarding, and so much more. But I was also deeply saddened by the death of that innocence that happened so many years ago and sometimes feels like it is still happening.

The story does not end there, however. Watching my daughter play and have this experience with her cousins resurrected something in me. It opened me up and made me realize that the part of me that is so alive in her and in them was not actually dead in me. It was only sleeping and, just like the perceived death of innocence is often not a moment but a process, so is awakening.

~Robert Van Valkenburgh