Some of you may enjoy my latest essay at Good Letters, the Image blog. The title is “In the Flesh,” and here’s an excerpt:
“These are the sweeter moments, but the rare ones; more often than not there is tugging at my clothes, usually by hands sticky with jelly or orange juice. They yank on my sleeve to hiss a petition for chewing gum, they step on my shoes, they reveal what illicit contraband they have smuggled into the sanctuary by dropping on the hard floors of the acoustically resonant cathedral their Legos and Matchbox cars and rubber balls that bounce amazingly high.
This is the flesh—this grasping, rending, imposing physicality of a child. I suspect that when Christ demanded the faith of a child he had this in mind as well, the full-bodied physical presence that is faith to a child—faith he won’t be cast from my lap, turned away from the pew, forced outside the circle of his brothers.”
