The other night around the dinner table I raised the question of comparison between Chesterton’s imagery of God’s “appetite for infancy” as expressed in “The Ethics of Elfland” in Orthodoxy, and the Bible’s clear teaching that maturity is the trajectory and goal for the believer, the church, and the world. How do those seemingly disparate pictures match up? How can they be synthesized? Are they supposed to be synthesized? Is my definition or understanding of maturity mistaken? (That’s likely, I suspect.) Today I read a terrific post by Jennifer Trafton Peterson over at The Rabbit Room. I really can’t commend it highly enough to you, so go read it, but I am going to steal a quote she cites from Madeleine L’Engle’s essay “The Door, the Key, the Road.” In distinguishing between childlike and childish, L’Engle writes,
A childish book, like a childish person, is limited, unspontaneous, closed in … But the childlike book, like the childlike person, breaks out of all boundaries. And joy is the key. Several years ago we took our children to Monticello, and I remember the feeling we all had of the fun Jefferson must have had with his experiments, his preposterous perpetual clock, for instance: what sheer, childlike delight it must have given him. Perhaps Lewis Carroll was really happy only when he was with children, especially when he was writing for them. Joy sparks the pages of Alice [in Wonderland], and how much more profound it is than most of his ponderous works for grownups… . But in the battering around of growing up the child gets hurt, and he puts on a shell of protection; he is frightened, and he slams doors. Real maturity lies in having the courage to open doors again, or, when they are pointed out, to go through them.
I especially love that last sentence.
None of us will ever get our minds around a God of play who is the Ancient of Days, and we should laugh in wonder at such a thought. And as we find ourselves in the season of Advent and looking to Christmas, let us remember that Wisdom became a child, and there was great joy in Heaven at that event. So great that it spilled over into our dimension, and was witnessed by shepherds and sheep! Let us imitate Heaven’s joy, and we will know something more of Heaven’s maturity and the courage it engenders.