Jewish Museum/Prague

Jesus said that unless we adopt the viewpoint of a little child, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. I've often wondered then why adults, not children, are in charge of religious education. And at my own spiritual crossroads, I returned to faith when I learned to stop, look, and listen to what children have to say.

Stop, look, and listen—advice we often give to children for their own safety. When it comes to their spiritual formation, then, we should take our own excellent advice. Otherwise we may project our own adult fears and ignorance onto the little ones.

Stop
One thing is certain about serious illness in children: it is a show-stopper for adults. For a change, we are speechless. We run out of wise things to say, as Nancy and Brad did the day they invited me to visit with their dying son.

In the months Scotty had been treated for cancer, they had raced around looking for a cure. Their task, as they saw it, was to find the right doctor and the right hospital for their son. Not once on that quest did they stop and consider the spiritual meaning of their pilgrimage, or what their thirteen-year-old son thought about a life-threatening illness. When they had exhausted their share of medical non-miracles, they came home to where they had begun with new questions. How do we talk to our child about dying?

On that gray late winter day we stood still together. "You know," I told them, "if I had one wish that could be granted, I wouldn't ask for beauty, or wealth, or power, or even for intelligence. I would ask for wisdom."

They turned from staring out the window. I had put their thoughts into words.

It isn't in the nature of adults to stop when we're fearful. For us it's a time for fight and/or flight. In fact, it's counterintuitive for the parent of a child at risk to do nothing. Good parents take responsibility for the welfare of their children. But there is something holy and healthy about acknowledging that we are not God for our children. We are merely fellow pilgrims.

Look
At Brad and Nancy's invitation, I joined them to visit Scotty. From a medical perspective, there was no question that he would die. His lungs were full of fluid. He was careful not to talk too much, lest it start him coughing. He would measure his words.

Scotty's parents had been attentive to his religious formation. In fact, they sent him to parochial school. But Brad and Nancy told me that they had no idea what Scotty thought about death. No one had told him directly that he was dying.

I have an image in my heart of a scene that happened in the X-ray department several days before my visit. Scotty's intern shared this story with me. As she passed him in the hallway, Dr. Sharon grinned at Scotty and yelled, "Give me high five!" As she brought her hand closer to his in this familiar pediatric salute, Scotty took her hand and drew her close.

"No," he said to his young doctor, "I want to hug you while I still can." There were tears in Sharon's eyes as she told me this story.

If you look at a dying child, you have two choices as to what you will see. Either you will see your fears spelled out in medical data and facts, or you will see an unquenchable spirit inviting you to draw near.

Listen
"What do you write about?" Scotty asked me, careful not to cough.

"A long time ago," I told him, "I figured out that I didn't have all the answers to life's most important questions. I learned that when I listen to kids—kids like you—I get more sensible answers than I hear from most adults. So I listen to children's stories and I write them down."

"You know," he said, warming up his story, "not everything in science is true. And not everything in religion either."

"What is it in science that you have difficulty believing?" I asked him.

"Well, take the Big Bang theory, for instance," he replied.

"OK," I said. "What's your problem with the Big Bang theory?"

"They say that the world came about by accident. But when I look at the world and everything in it, I see a design and a plan. I could be wrong, but I doubt it."

Scotty folded his arms across his chest, firming up his position.

With science put squarely in its place, we moved on to his other area of doubt.

"What is it about religion that you have trouble believing?" I asked him.

"Well, take David and Goliath, for instance."

"What, pray tell, is your problem with David and Goliath?" I asked him.

"Well, they say that Goliath was 8'4" tall, and there is nobody that tall," Scotty said firmly.

"I've seen some pretty tall basketball players in my time," I countered.

"Not that tall," he insisted.

I was losing the argument, so I got medical.

"There's this pituitary condition where you keep making more and more growth hormone, and you keep growing and growing and growing."

"Not that tall," Scotty said. His arms re-crossed his breast to hold his position tight. Then he became very quiet.

"You know," he said softly, "it's not the details that matter. It's the moral of the story."

I was speechless, and so was Nancy who was standing by the bedside wondering, "Is this my son talking?"

I thought about this boy, immersed in the terrifying world of high-tech medicine. Then I thought about David and Goliath. Just what was the moral of these stories, young Scotty's, young David's? Both stories are tales of little lads who would prevail against something that was unbelievably big. As big as Goliath. As big as death. But Scotty wasn't finished with me yet.

"Do you pray?" he asked me. Patients don't often ask their doctors this question!

"Yes, I do. Do you pray?" I wondered back at him.

"Every night," he retorted.

"Now that really interests me," I said. "And I need to learn a lot about prayer. Perhaps if you told me what you know about prayer, I might learn something helpful. Tell me how you pray."

"I start by saying a prayer," Scotty said, and started reciting a child's prayer from rote memory. "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep."

As he looked up at those invisible but powerfully present words, Scotty started nodding as if he agreed with himself, agreed with what he had just read. "If I should die before I wake," his nodding became more vigorous, "I pray the Lord my soul to take." He was pleased with his words. "And then I pray for everyone I know."

"I tell you what, Scotty," I said. "I'll pray for you if you'll pray for me." Scotty smiled softly, and then he said, "I've already been praying for you. Every night I pray for all the doctors and nurses on the team."

The most precious lessons in spiritual formation I've learned have been from dying children. But Jesus was talking about all children when he said: "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." I wonder what we might learn if we stopped, looked, and listened to all the children in our lives? Instead of saying, "Let me tell you about God," just once ask a child: "Tell me what you know about God." Even when we are up against something that is unbelievably big, we may enter a realm where we too are part of a grand design and a heavenly plan.