Episode 6: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid
Greetings and salutations earthlings. Welcome to the sixth episode of the Fish Sandwich Heaven episode. Before we get started, I want to let you peek behind the curtain for a bit.
Porsha Williams Gates is my producer for this show, and she gave me the brilliant idea to bank a series of episodes at a time for the first month. I recorded all the episodes in one day on my iPhone as I sat on my bed.
So, this is the first time I’m speaking to you since we’ve gone live, and I cannot say how thankful I am for your being here. Putting out a podcast is scary because, if you’re like me, you get nervous about your words just floating about in the ether without you having some control over them. It has been my hope to make something useful for the people. Whether you are Christian or not, I really believe that Heaven is real. That freedom is real. That there is a land flowing with Milk and honey. A land where cops and prisons do not exist, where the boxes that confine us here on Earth simply have dissolved. A place where everyone has a safe place to lay their head as their true selves each night, where love is abundant, where Queen Latifah sings lullabies and Tina Turner teaches dance class. A place where you can see the specialists you need for your body and you can trust that no one is gaslighting you about your symptoms. A place where no one judges you for how you prepare your grits.
I see it and I hope it is real. But even if it isn’t, you’ve made it real to me. It’s real out here and I never wanna minimize just how much the government has abandoned us AGAIN. I have no clue what 2021 looks like, but I am praying and working for a near-future where we are free. I’m so glad you’re here.
As a note, because it’s the holiday season and I am an associate minister at a church, we will not have weekly episodes this december. We’ll have just three episodes this month, and then we’ll be back to our weekly episodes in January starting the 11. The intergalactic holiday, my 30th birthday, is January 10, so I hope you will all be finding ways to celebrate me and drizzle me in glitter digitally.
The Chopping board
There is a child inside of me who has never disappeared.
No matter how old I am, I deserve to be loved, supported, and safe.
I can’t (and couldn’t) control the circumstances of my birth. My childhood is not a reflection of what I am worth or what I deserve.
With each passing day, I can attend to the younger versions of myself. The systems that force us to grow up quickly are wearing on our bodies, spirits and imaginations. We are not imagining the weight of those forces.
Our fish Sandwich
Luke 2:43-51 (NRSV)
43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents[l] saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” 49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[m] 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
Where a Kid Can Be A Kid
I have spent 3 years, almost 70 K, and endless nights of arguing with God pursuing a formal theological education. This does not include nearly 30 years of church experience and a childhood of Vacation Bible School. I have been to conferences, participated in and led workshops, and preached in several places. I’m not saying this because I want to brag. I’m saying this so that you know that someone else has a question.
I want to know, how is it possible that we celebrate the birth of Jesus in December, only for him to be killed in April by Easter? Doesn’t that mean that, in order to be 33 when he dies, he has to age an average of 8.25 years per month?
Sometimes I wonder what kind of faith we would have if we had more time for Jesus to live a human life. For most of our liturgical calendar, we are either waiting on Jesus to be born, waiting for him to die, or celebrating his resurrection. I wonder, often, what this does to us as believers. What it does for Christians. And how it aids in the proliferation of Christian Supremacy. After all, we tend to assume that other people understand our story, that they get what our holy days mean, that they value the myths we recite in pulpits. But if you think about it, i mean really think about it, this whole thing is weird.
I almost want us to live the story of Jesus’ life in 33-year cycles. Imagine if we really walked with just one story for a year. If we explored the social, political, economic, religious, and yes, even imperialist implications for the faith?
As a side note, I had a teacher in high school who taught us an acronym for exploring different angles of a given phenomenon. The acronym was SPERM.
Social
Political
Economic
Religious
Military/Imperialism.
Anyhoo, that’s a freebie. Go for it. May your inner high schooler giggle about it.
And perhaps Jesus has grown up too quickly. I don’t know when he realizes that He is the son of God, or what that means to him, or what sacrifices will be made. But knowing that you will not live into the graying of your hair will age you.
Awareness of your mortality will age you. We might infer that because Christ knows the temple is where his Divine Parent is, that he has at least some inkling of how his life will end…
Imagine, being 12, and knowing that your life, ministry, death and resurrection will start a movement.
No one child should have knowledge about this.
I keep thinking back to this video of a beautiful baby girl protesting in the street this summer. She’s got her mask around her chin, and she’s fiercely protesting in the street and chanting. So many people shared that with the sentiment that they were moved or inspired. But I wasn’t. That baby should be at home with Barney and with her Baby Einstein tapes. She should be making up songs in the tub about soaps and fishies. It does not inspire me to see children taking up the mantle. It breaks my heart. Because it reminds me of the world they will inherit.
James Baldwin, in an iconic clip said something to the effect of, “you’ve taken my grandparents time, you’ve taken my mothers and father’s time, you’ve taken my time, you’ve taken my children’s time. How much time do you want for your progress?”
Always be skeptical of people who say “things take time” when they haven’t looked at the clock. Let’s go! CHOP CHOP!
I think of all the ancestors we now have who didn’t get to be adults. Aiyana Stanley Jones. Nigel Shelby. Blake Brockington. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown.
So many children in this world have to grow up too quick, just to die too soon.
But we don’t really know much about Jesus as a child. The story is written with such urgency, like the author just wants to get to the Good Parts of Christ’s adulthood and ministry.
In Luke, We have a chapter dedicated to the prophecy of Christ’s birth, an angel showing up in Mary’s living room telling her she’s about to be knocked up, a protest hymn from his freedom fighting mama, an executive order from the Emperor himself, and all this happens before Jesus gets here. And then, BOOM, Jesus is 12.
No story of him teething. Or learning how to walk. Or pushing his parents’ patience in the market by touching every fruit and licking it. The first time we see Jesus after he is born and blessed is at 12.
And I wonder--
Why do we expect children to grow up so quickly?
Of course, some argue that the writer of this gospel wanted us to see that Jesus was brilliant wayyyyy early. After all, it does parallel a well-known legend about the Roman leader Augustus, who benefitted from a top tier education. In fact, he was so well-educated that it is said he gave a funeral oration for his grandmother...when he was twelve.
Luke has this aim of proving to the audience that Jesus can be a leader. And not an earthly leader for the Empire, but a leader hand-picked by God. This is a narrative meant to convince people that Jesus can do anything your worldly leader can do better. Anything you can do, I can do better.
I am reminded of that good ole reminder in my own tradition, “kings and kingdoms shall all pass away, but there’s something about that Name.”
Still, as a twelve year old, Jesus has to bear someone else’s agenda.
Even today, Black feminist scholars call it “Adultification.” You know what that is. When we see Black girls who are 14 and assume they are older. When we as a society objectify their bodies. When we as a community snatch the opportunity of innocence and childhood from them. Studies after studies after studies show that Black girls are treated in very specific racialized and gendered ways. If you’re into this kind of thing, check out Monique Morris’ Pushout or the New York Based advocacy and organizing based group, “Girls for Gender Equity.” GGE made a video not too long featuring a few Black girls in New York Schools.
One girl mentioned that she was given a suspension and lost the ability to keep up with classwork. Another mentioned that her rat-tail comb, used to keep her doobie fresh, was confiscated as contraband.
I can testify that as a high schooler at James Madison High School, the same place people went to lay down roses for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I also had an unfortunate experience with school safety agents. And while I was shaped by a few incredible teachers and classmates, I’ll never forget the shock of having to go through scanning.
I remember the math it took to calculate which bus you needed to get to class ON time, factoring in how long you might be standing on line. In rain, in cold, in heat, in snow.
And I think about how, if you had hair pins in your wrap, or a belt that you forgot to take off in time, you’d have to be manually scanned in the little nook area. In front of other people walking to class. On time. I thought about what it felt like to be wanded in full view of my crush.
And I think about how they told us we couldn’t bring cell phones to school because they didn’t trust us. And I think about the delis that held our cell phones because we were teenagers with social lives in Brooklyn and our families needed to know where we were.
And I think about the time I was reading in the stairwell because I was too shy to go to the cafeteria alone, and a school safety agent found me and brought me to the in school suspension room. For reading.
And I think about the years we weren’t allowed to bring water in opened/reusable bottles to school because I guess some students were sneaking in liquor. And so we had to either drink from them stank fountains or buy something from the machines.
And I think about how the girls’ bathroom was notoriously disgusting and never cleaned with dignity.
It’s hard to see those steps without thinking about those other things.
And I think about how easy it is for us to see sites of political importance as sacred landmarks.
And how human it is to... just feel something different.
The most horrifying realization though? Knowing that this experience wasn’t the only or even the worst. It was just mine.
Children live difficult lives. All across the world, Children have to learn to be their own advocates. Their own lawyers. The family cook. The family translator. The junior babysitter. Or they may have to be the emotionally mature individual, dealing with a parent who struggles with an addiction. Every childhood was not the stuff of Sesame Street. Many children are carrying more burdens than anyone can imagine, and because they are children, they get labeled.
Special. Touched. This child should be evaluated. This child is disturbed. This child is fast. Children don’t obey their parents these days…
Which is why this image of Jesus in the temple, after having been separated from his parents for a few days tickles me. Because of all the times I have been lost in the grocery store, I have never answered my parents with, “why were you looking for me? Don’t you know I would be in the toaster strudel section?”
Children often fall through the cracks.
This passage is set during the festival of Passover. It matters that this vignette happens how and when it does. The festival is an opportunity for people to be in groups. As this gospel tells the story, Mary and Joseph assumed that Jesus was in the group. They realized he wasn’t, and then they started looking for him among family and friends. The Greek suggests not that they just “looked,” but they “hunted.” They’re likely fuming.
The first time I read this, I judged them. How could you lose your own kid, and you got the nerve to be anxious? How could you let your child just wander off? What kind of parent are you? And I realized, here I was, judging someone instead of asking how we can avoid this kind of anxiety-inducing ordeal altogether. I am not a parent. When my friends who are parents talk about some of their challenges in the last few months, I feel so helpless. Even piecemeal supports do not address the impossibility of living, working and existing at home. We’re not meant to live like this.
Mary and Joseph looked for Jesus among their family and friends because it was the festival. It made sense that if Jesus was not among us, then certainly he was at his cousin’s spot. Sometimes children fall through the cracks because adults have not coordinated and communicated. Sometimes this is no one person’s fault. Sometimes it IS someone’s fault. The generous way to read this is to believe that perhaps Mary and Joseph assumed Jesus was with someone and still in the group.
Children teach us
Children may fall through the cracks, but there ought to be some place where children can just be children. Where they can blow bubbles and make TikTok videos and braid each other’s hair. And in this story, that place happened to be the Temple. We find Jesus in this temple, and as the text says, he was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” Jesus found what so few children found. And that is, a space to be curious among believers.
It is too frequent an occurrence that in religious spaces, we like to make children sit down and shut up. In schools, people sure do like to keep children busy, neat, and obedient. But here, even when Mother and Father had slipped up, there was a place for Jesus to be. To pursue the wonders of his own imagination.
This word for “temple” can be understood as “sacred place.” We know that there are more sacred places than just church buildings. There are community organizations, sports teams, dance programs, cookouts, theater programs and so many more. Our children deserve access and opportunity to enjoy sacred spaces, both in and out of the church. And it is our job as adults to make sure that these sacred spaces are not just sacred, but safe. In fact, that is what makes them sacred.
Our inner children need treasuring.
But lest we believe that this is only a passage about literal children, let us remember that we all have a child within us. You may be 18, or 40, or 89, but inside of your psyche, inside your heart, inside your brain, there are memories of who you were when you were 4 and 7 and 10. And this child has needs.
If you were raised in a household where you were often told to be quiet at the family function, your inner child now may need opportunities to speak. If you were raised in a household where you needed to take care of other people’s emotional needs, your inner child may need respite. If you grew up with instability and you moved around often, your inner child may want to seek roots. Everyone’s inner child needs something different.
Perhaps this whole ordeal made Jesus consider his own inner child. Perhaps this memory is what convinced him to later say, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Christ remembers what it was like to be a child. Because he himself was one.
The wonder of Advent for me is that Christ did not show up fully done. He did not show up to this earth a fully grown man. He knows what it is like to be human, from birth to death and beyond. He came to know what it was like to be hungry, to be scared, to be surveilled, to party, to laugh, to eat with friends, to not have a home, to be rejected, to be betrayed. Christ remembers his childhood, and he remembers yours. It is for this reason that I can sing with confidence, Jesus knows all about our struggles;
He will guide ’til the day is done:
There’s not a Friend like the lowly Jesus:
No, not one! no, not one!
To Go Bag:
So I invite you to make time for your inner child. Figure out what they need. Do you need to watch the new season of Animaniacs and stop the outside world for a bit? Do you need to choreograph something to the Cheetah Girls? Do you need to set boundaries with people you love? Your inner child will hold you as you hold them.
The one who is inside you has a need. And the one who is inside of you has an offering to this world. Christ’s example to us is that we can seek spaces that hold the totality of who we are. If we do not see those spaces in our everyday life, we can go somewhere else. Even if that means making your parents nervous.
Have grace and compassion for yourself and for the children you meet every day. We are all just looking for a place where a kid can be a kid.