The Deep Mystery of the Child: Part 1

by Dr. David Fleischacker

The deep mystery of the child is the same as the heart or the essence of every human soul.  Most of the time we think of a mystery as an unknown. There is something true here.  The child is not really known yet to the world.  And the child is not known to himself or herself.  Yet both of these miss an even deeper set of mysteries which I hope to travel into today and in the next blog. 

That deeper mystery centers upon the fact that the child has not yet come to be himself or herself.  At the heart of the child is a potentiality that has yet to be realized.  Where is it headed?

This potentiality of the child is awaiting its calling forth. There is a tremendous interior force at work in the child.  It is as if the entire energy of the universe has awakened into consciousness.  But at the same time, this awakening is in relationship to and response to the world.  And that world has some role in calling forth the awakening.  Largely, that world is mom, dad, siblings, grandparents, and friends, and then there is daycare and school, and other bodies who take care of and institutionalize the young child.  Unfortunately, and through no real mal-intent toward a particular child, that calling forth is not to the realization of the child before us, but of something less, something truncated. I tend to think that we expect little from children because we expect little from ourselves and others. We are filled with pusillanimity. We dream of a secure life of a balanced budget, a nice house with a warm fireplace (at least in places where we have lots of cold and snow), a job we like, a few good friends, a nice retirement egg, and enough money for that car and boat and vacation.  When we dream big, we think of fame and power and wealth. Whether we are talking about a good job or fame, these do not seem like little things, and so we are not even aware of this littleness. In this list, one might object that “a few good friends” should be the exception.  I would agree if the point of the friendships were aimed at more than what they tend to be. Most friendships in the end tend to be companions who support each other in all of these little things.  We grow up wanting little lives rather than the magnanimity for which we were made.  St. Theresa the little flower knew that magnanimity.  So did St. Faustina and St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and St. Gianna Molla. [One should note that the danger of thinking along the lines of magnanimity is that then one might think that “doing little things” is irrelevant, but the reason I mention these saints, especially the first one, is that they highlight how we become magnanimous in doing little things with love.]  

Pusillanimity too often dominates us. This is something that Montessori’s “following the child” undoes.  A teacher is being taught constantly by the child.  The nature and life of the child undoes pusillannimty because the great mystery of the universe is unfolding in each and every soul of each and every boy and girl.  In human beings the finality of the universe has come to be conscious.  One of the theologians and philosophers of the 20th century who I have come to respect said that in his book Insight.  Bernard Lonergan was born in 1904 and died in 1984. The universe he says is dynamically developing in an increasingly intelligible manner.  He argues this even in the face of the idea of entropy and the wearing out of the universe.  It means that there is meant to be an unfolding increase of goodness and beauty and glory in the universe.  The child lives this and experiences it deeply in his or her soul without even knowing it. 

And I think adults almost recognize it even though in many of us it has dwindled to a dull light.  And I am NOT saying this merely of others as if I have some high vantage point.  I point primarily to myself in that critique.  I too often do not live out this magnanimity.  I too often fail to be awed by the grand potentiality that resides in the child’s soul which does not need to be formed by some manager, but nurtured and given room to thrive.

The mystery of the child deepens the more one understands creation and history.  Just as the culture and the family come to dwell in a child as she or he grows and discovers more and more about both, so the same happens as the child learns more and more about creation and history.  And in that inner reception of culture and family, creation and history, the child comes to be. It is as if the seven days of creation happen again and again in each child as the wind blows over them and brings forth the seas and land, the small and big lights of the sky, the creatures that swim in the sea, the birds that fly in the air, and the animals that crawl on the ground.  Fruitfulness and multiplication are the inner principles of the child.  And all this can happen in them because “In our image and likeness” the child has been made.  The second creation happens later after the age of reason and the rise of adolescence. Then Adam and Eve rise out of the boy and the girl. But during the first 12 years, there is literally the creation of the child as the child comes to know and adore (and fear) creation. [as a note for those philosophers out there, I am not referring to a first moment of creation ex nihilo, but an actualization of potencies] 

This reveals something profound that St. Thomas Aquinas notes.  When we come to know the world, we not only know it, but we become a mirror of it.  A kind of micro-universe.  Interiorly we become what we know.  And we only know others and the world by becoming like them (not necessarily morally, but intellectually).  The child takes great delight in this becoming.  They even go so far as to spontaneously imitate over and over the living creatures they see. 

Let’s call this becoming an indwelling.  The potentiality of the universe comes to dwell in a conscious way in the potentiality of the child.  The world of the child’s immediate surroundings comes to be the playground of the child’s inner life, and that inner life comes to be made with its uniqueness and character in that playground.  Thus mom, dad, brother, sister, cousins, friends, animals, and nature come to dwell in the child as the realities that have come to form the child.  Even the neurons are adapted to this indwelling.

This mysterious potentiality is found in the unborn and found in old age.  It is why authentic teachers always are learning, and when they discover the child, the child comes to dwell in their heart. The mystery of the child reveals the mystery of the teacher.

Part 2 explores this mystery at a Transcendent level.