By John Cooper
Guest Column
My heart ached (recently) with the family that lost their two-year-old little girl, Miley, on Sept. 6. I feel for them because of the vulnerability of life’s journey.
From one moment to the next, everything can change.
(Last month) our OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults) met. We welcomed seven new inquirers seeking to feed their interest in possibly becoming Catholic. Their journey didn’t begin with attending an OCIA session. Even if they haven’t been actively practicing their faith, their journey began when God first imagined them.
Before our parents conceived us, we were already part of God’s plan of creation. Whether we are awake, asleep, or sleepwalking through life, God is here with us. Yet many of us spend much of life sleepwalking. Sometimes being unaware seems easier, especially when life hurts. Whether we realize it or not, many of us try to control our lives and the lives of those around us.
For instance, when I was a young father, I heard of a family that had a birthday pool party at a local hotel. Sadly, during the party, one of the children drowned. After that, I told my wife and children, don’t ever ask to have a pool party for your birthday; I don’t want to take the risk of experiencing a tragedy like that one. That desire for safety shaped other decisions.
Kate and I moved back to my hometown of Ripley, Ohio, to raise our family in a setting resembling Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show. We imagined we could create a wholesome, “safe” environment for our children. Life would eventually teach me otherwise.
I’m reminded of a story that illustrates my approach to life then. A mother sat in the stands watching her young son come to bat. Instead of watching him swing, she found herself thinking, please don’t let him get hit. What if he gets hit in the head? She became so consumed by what might happen that she could hardly watch. Then a pitch got away and struck her son, the very thing she feared.
What we continually focus on can grow until it dominates our perception of life. While worrying about what might happen next, we can miss what is happening right now.
The prolific writer C.S. Lewis, in his book “Surprised by Joy,” has a line that gets at where I’m heading here. He writes, “What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing.”
Life has taught me an “honest thing” that has, at times, been painful to learn: I’m not in control; God is. When we try to control life, we end up living in the past, focused on what went wrong, or in the future, trying to plan every square inch of what might happen.
Life’s unpredictability reminds me of a story Father Anthony de Mello told. A boy finds an alligator caught in a net. The alligator promises not to eat him if he sets him free. The boy does, and the alligator promptly tries to eat him. A clever rabbit convinces the alligator to release the boy. The boy then brings men from the village who kill the alligator, and the boy’s dog kills the rabbit who saved him, so much for predictable endings.
Yet the great mystic Julian of Norwich could still say, “All shall be well.” Not because nothing painful will happen, but because God will be there when it does.
St. John Henry Newman prayed, “I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step is enough for me.” We cannot make life safe by controlling it; fear pulls us into an imagined future, regret pulls us into the past, and God meets us in the only place we can actually live, the present. I cannot control what the next moment will bring. I can only choose how fully and faithfully I live this moment.
Back to beautiful Miley. Her obituary said, “Miley approached the world with curiosity, a dash of mischief, and a lot of passion.” In her short time on earth, Miley knew something many of us spend a lifetime trying to learn: how to be fully alive in the moment God has given us. And now, we can imagine her smiling in the loving arms of God.
(John Cooper is pastoral associate and business manager at St. Anthony Parish in Davenport. He is also in formation for the permanent diaconate. This column originally appeared in a September issue of the parish’s weekly email newsletter.)
