The Equipment

The other day I took Norah to play on 'the equipment.' That's her name for a place with playground equipment for children. This particular equipment happens to be at the elementary school that she will attend when she gets to that age. I heard her tell her dad not long ago that someday she would go to the school that belongs to the equipment (rather than the school that owns the equipment). Clearly, the 'equipment' is more central to her than the school right now.

On the day Norah and I went to The Equipment, three older girls were also playing there. They were probably a couple of years older than Norah. And of course they could do things that Norah can't yet. She was enthralled by the older girls. She watched them closely. She wanted so much to be part of their group—and to be able to perform the movements on the equipment that they were able to do. As a two and a half year old, she is obsessed with getting bigger and taller and stronger. It's the I-am-a-big-girl syndrome. Quite natural. I kept reassuring her that as she grew bigger she would be able to do what those other girls were doing.

What Norah is going through is a positive part of human development. It is a positive impulse to want to be bigger and better and stronger. Without such an impulse the human race would have become extinct. God has created us with a natural desire to excel. Perhaps the Olympic Games are the basic metaphor for this human trait.

But what begins as a natural impulse somehow gets warped. We find ourselves as adults still trying to live up to the skills and talents of others instead of accepting ourselves as we are. We have to eventually accept the ceiling of our skills and our personal traits. One of the Seven Deadly Sins is Envy. And one form of envy is the desire to have the powers and looks of others, which is at the same time a lack of acceptance of our own uniqueness.

Children have positive forces at work within them. Even some behavior that we adults see as destructive or inappropriate turns out to be healthy if we look deeply into the natural growth processes at work. Jesus gives us the key to the affirmation of the wild nature of children. He says that the Kingdom of God—the family that God gathers together—is made up of people who allow the wild forces of joyful play to be manifest in their lives. Or as he put it: You will enter God's Kingdom if you become like children. (Which is sort of like being born all over again.)

Norah also likes to go to the Equipment at the city park and at the Railroad Park and any other place that has slides and swings and other playful things. St. Paul, in the fourth chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians says that the role of Pastor is for the purpose of 'equipping' the church for service. As I look back at my years in pastoral ministry I wish I had been more playful and less serious.