With all the headline news this summer, both abroad and closer to home, you might have missed the discovery of an ancient document that tells a story about Jesus as a five-year-old boy. He was playing beside a creek, shaping mud into clay birds, when another kid ratted him out to his dad. Joseph scolded Jesus for playing on the Sabbath, the holy day of rest, so Jesus clapped his hands, and the mud came to life as singing sparrows.
Granted, this tale is not in the Bible. It sounds like it belongs in Harry Potter. But I think it’s awesome to have a story about any kid playing in the mud and getting away with it.
I am sometimes made to feel shame about celebrating such little things, as if the joy that flows from such gifts is not appropriate during such times of terrible news.
Yet, there is something sacred about the act of play—a life-giving practice that makes the extraordinary out of the ordinary. The magic is in the spell of our attention.
On this day, August 8, Ross Gay wrote about the delight of his current notebook—a gradebook that he had “liberated” from the university where he teaches. This gradebook might have been used to record a student’s negligence or failure; Gay repurposed it for joy. That too is magic, just like I’m writing in view of a swing set and a child, perhaps five years old, who has transformed herself into a bird. “Look at me! I’m flying!”
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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