Christ Church

I put away childish things

To be childish is one thing, to be childlike is quite another. It is an important distinction. To be childlike is to be open to wonder; the very opposite of what Chaucer called “childissh vanytee”, a lack of maturity and a kind of egotism.

The poet and writer, Mary Oliver, observes that “I am, myself, three selves at least.” There is the child in us that remains with us; “it is not gone.” There is “the attentive, social child” that seeks the certainties of daily life in routines, to what is regular and ordinary, “the ordinariness that makes the world go round.” But there is the third child in us that is open to wonder, “a self which is neither a child nor the servant of the hours” for “it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.” That child or self in us has everything to do with intellectual, spiritual, and artistic life, she argues.

We read in Chapel this week Paul’s great hymn of love from 1st Corinthians 13 and part of the story of Christ’s Presentation and Mary’s Purification, commonly known as Candlemas. It marks the transition from Christmas to Easter, from light to life, but by way of love, as Paul’s hymn makes clear. Christ is but an infant, an unspeaking child, carried in the arms of Mary, but old Simeon taking him up in his arms sees in him both the hope of Israel and of our humanity; “a light to lighten the Gentiles and the hope of thy people Israel.” He has a grasp of eternity in our midst.

Paul’s hymn is one of the outstanding works of literature regardless of one’s religious or non-religious identity. The word “charity” is the key word, explicitly mentioned nine times and implicitly another eleven times. It means love, but what kind of love? This little word in English carries a great freight and weight of meaning. Charity is the English translation of caritas, one of a number of different Latin words for love and the Latin translation of agape, one of a number of different Greek words for love. The King James Version of the Bible, the classical English translation which has had the greatest influence on the shaping of the English language since 1611, bar none, uses charity, an Englishing of the Latin, caritas.

Ubi est caritas et amor, ibi est Deus – “where there is charity and love, there is God.” A famous line from an 8th century poem by Paulinus of Aquileia, it captures prayerfully and powerfully how love is not simply something personal, emotional, romantic or sensual. Like Paul, it is talking about love as God. His hymn complements the scripture text you have heard repeatedly: “God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” Both John and Paul have an insight into the idea of eternal love which seeks the perfection of all our human loves which are in disarray. Yet to be reminded of the uncertain qualities of our human love as Shakespeare reminds us, (“In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes”), is also to be opened to its transcendent and eternal qualities. In this sense, love here is not something fleeting and fickle but constant and eternal, dynamic and active. Why? Because it is grounded in the idea of God himself and in his will for us. And it is transformative. It is about growing up in understanding and maturing in love.

Candlemas is the feast of meeting (hypapante) in the Eastern Orthodox Christian understanding. It is the meeting of the old and the new, the meeting of Simeon and Anna with the Child Christ in the Temple, a meeting that signals the fulfillment of the Law and inaugurates the journey of love in sacrifice. The light of Candlemas is the light of love and life. It is a double feast; at once of Christ and of Mary, and as such it points us to the unifying power of divine love which binds us together.

The context of Paul’s hymn is about our life together as a community of souls, of selves who are more than one-dimensional, more than single ‘identities’. In modern parlance, we all have ‘hybrid identifies’, and in a myriad of ways. Love here belongs to the love of learning which is the meaning of our schools. That is about our openness to wonder, to what is eternal and which abides in us and with one another.

That third child in us is taken up with wonder, “with creative activity which requires solitude and the wandering of the mind,” as Mary Oliver puts it. It does not refute the ordinary and daily routines of our rounded days; “it is simply something else.” Just so with Paul’s hymn. It is about a higher form of love which seeks our good and our perfection in what is eternal and everlasting. For without that sense of wonder there is no wisdom. Here is love in wisdom, awakening us to our knowing even as we are known. It requires that “we put away childish things,” knowing that we see but “in a glass darkly,” yet knowing that we see at least in part something of which belongs to wonder and delight, to what is eternal; “a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.”

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy