MORTON T. KELSEY is an Episcopalian priest, now a professor emeritus of the University of Notre Dame. He is nationally recognized and sought after as a theologian, psychologist, educator, priest, and man of prayer. The last designation in particular reflects the intense interest Kelsey has sparked by reintroducing and reintegrating the spiritual-meditative-mystical tradition of the church into modern life in general and professional pastoral practice in particular. Isaiah 11 contains the classic passage of the wolf dwelling with the lamb through the leadership of the little child. Kelsey uses the often-neglected spiritual level of interpretation of the text and addresses himself to the issue of personal healing and wholeness in his sermon A Little Child Shall Lead Them.
A few years ago, I had a strange and moving experience, an experience which I would hardly have believed if it had not happened to me.
I was talking to a strong and wealthy man of the world, a man who has taken a very difficult business situation and made a great success of it. We were discussing his childhood, a childhood which left much to be desired. In his youth this man had never felt accepted, always being forced to become what his parents wanted him to be. The result was that the little child which all of us have within us still dwelt within him unaccepted and unhappy. He felt divided and less than whole, often suffering dark depressions and sicknesses.
As I listened to him, a phrase kept ringing through my mind: "A little child shall lead them." I wondered where it had come from. I reached for my concordance, looked up the verse and found that it came, not from the New Testament, but the Old. When the man had stopped speaking, I read the verses which I had found in Isaiah chapter 11:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The suckling child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9 RSV)
The Power of the Prophetic Word
Before I had finished the reading, this man had begun to sob like a hurt child, and he continued uncontrolled for ten or fifteen minutes after I had finished. Then a great peace settled upon him, for he knew the reality of his inner child and the power of wholeness and felt more clearly the direction and meaning of his life. What a depth these few verses revealed and spoke to.
A friend of C. G. Jung’s told me that when the great psychiatrist was going through the darkest hour of his life, facing the very depth of the unconscious and separated from his former friend, Freud, he too was searching the Bible. It was another verse of the book of Isaiah which spoke to the very depth of him and gave him the courage and the insight to go on. It was chapter 35 which tells of a way of holiness which shall lead men through every difficulty to the place where the desert blossoms as the rose. There is a strange power in this old prophet and his words. He touches the heart.
So few people, however, know how to read the Bible or religious books. They do not listen to these writings with the heart. There was no doubt that this verse had broken through the thinking level and had spoken to the very depth of the man who was with me in a creative way which nothing I could have said would have done. These verses were paced with power.
The Wolf and the Leopard
What do these verses mean? Later I looked them up in the commentaries. All the scholars had to say was that the prophet looked for the coming of the Messianic kingdom. They had not even gotten the point of what was being said. They did not realize that the author of these amazing verses was indeed a prophet and that he spoke out of the center of the spiritual world. A prophet does glimpse the future, but even more importantly, he reveals the nature of reality here and now in the deepest and most meaningful way.
The author of this passage knew the spiritual world, a world which contains such forces as lions and bears and wolves. He knew that each of us contains within the destructive and aggressive side of spiritual reality. When it is let loose, it produces a Hitler or Attila or Genghis Khan if the man gets into power, or a sullen bully or witch at home and on the job if it is only an ordinary man or woman.
The Lamb and the Kid
There is also within us the lamb, the kid, the fatling: the passive, kindly, non-resisting, gentle side - creative, valuable. This is the side which can relate to and be close to others. It is often used by others, but it cannot stand alone.
The snake, too, lies within us - the wily self-contained part which cares nothing for anyone else. It was the snake who represented the evil one or the devil in the Garden of Eden, and tempted Adam and Eve.
How often today we speak of a person as a wolf or a lion or a snake or a lamb. And when we dream, we are presented with these very same images today. They are not archaic and old fashioned. On the contrary, they are still with us. They represent the various aspects of the spiritual world with which we must deal.
One of the reasons for the conflict and anxiety and misery in us is that we have not learned how to make these warring parts of us get along together. We are part wolf, part snake, part lion, part lamb. Confusion and chaos arise when we are possessed by one and then another part.
The Little Child
The prophet proclaimed that only as the little child within us is allowed to live, only then can these warring tendencies or archetypes come to harmony, only so. Strange as it may seem, it is not the reasonable adult or the powerful sword-wielding warrior or the judging parent who brings these various parts of us into harmony and cooperation, but rather the child, the little child. This child has the creative power to make us whole and one ... to make the most amazing things happen in what had been an insignificant life before. The whole of creation goes along with that man. This is the mystery and power, a real Christianity.
Remember those often repeated and seldom heeded words of Jesus: "Trust me when I tell you that whoever does not accept the kingdom of God as a child will not enter into it" (Luke 18:17 NAB). When the disciples asked him who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he placed a little child in their midst and said the same thing (Matthew 18:1-3). Jesus also insisted we must be born again. (John 3:2) He kept repeating the same truth.
He was emphasizing that unless you have the courage to find and face the little child within you, the part of you which has been rejected and ignored and despised, unless you face it and let it direct your life, you shall not come to the kingdom of heaven or wholeness. Unless the little child in you is allowed to live, there is no hope that the lion and the lamb, the kid and the bear, the cow and the wolf within each of us can come into harmony. Only so can the snake in each of us be controlled and directed.
Eric Berne has gained fame by writing simple and profound books on psychiatry. He maintains that there is within each of us the adult, the parent, and the child. Unless we are able to face all three and deal with them all, we get sick. He goes on to say that it is the child who contains the creative life and power and yet is most often forgotten among modern men. Until we can reach the playful, creative, imaginative child within us, we are dull and unwhole, fragmented and anxious, seeing no meaning or value in life.
The Christ Child
Every year at Christmas we celebrate the coming of a divine child into the world. This passage from Isaiah which I have quoted was seen in early Christian times to be a prophecy of the coming of the Christ into the the world. All of us who understand Christmas want the Christ-child to be born not only 2,000 years ago but also to be born in us today and to dwell with us permanently.
One thing is most sure: It is not possible for the divine child, the Christ-child, to be born in us unless we first have the courage to face the ordinary childlike side of ourselves and let it live. So many of us were hurt as children that we dare not show the child within us, the one who is warm and open, caring and trusting, wishing to give and receive love. We are so afraid that we shall be hurt again. When we allow the child to live in us, we can be deeply hurt again. The child is very vulnerable. However, unless we allow the real child within us to live and find that he is acceptable in us, we shall never have a place for the divine child to be born in us.
Unfortunately, most of us will show anything to friends, wives, husbands, except this inner child. Yet we never face this child within us until we can show it to another. A real friend is one with whom we can trust the little child within us. When did you last let another see the inner child in you?
When you let your inner child come to life, then the divine child can be born, and the warring parts of you can come to peace, and you can have meaning and hope and even joy. If you cannot be childlike, you shall never be whole, creative, and at peace.
Jesus said that except we be born again and become as little children, we shall not enter into the kingdom of wholeness, creativity and peace. It was true in his time, in the time of Isaiah, in the time of Eric Berne ... In other words, it is TRUE!
*A Little Child Shall Lead Them was first published in leaflet form by Dove Publications of the Benedictine Abbey in Pecos, New Mexico 87552.
The Rev. Morton T. Kelsey