Purity of Presence
He helped me become alive to life.
– John Piper
We passed a milestone this month. We no longer have any children five or below: our youngest just turned six. In theory, I’m all about celebrations as a reminder to stop and appreciate those in our lives: in reality, I try to get by with as little party-planning as possible. This did not phase our child. She started counting down to her birthday months in advance. She spread her grand news with cheerful alacrity to one and all. She informed me daily of which new classmate she had invited to her party (along with what their dietary restrictions were). She sprang out of bed on her big day exclaiming, “it’s my birthday!”
Young children approach their birthdays so differently than adults. They don’t try to downplay the whole thing. They aren’t insecure about who will remember it or come to their party. They don’t secretly wish for a gift that they don’t tell anyone about. They don’t worry about getting older.
Why was she so happy? It didn’t have to do with anything we did (her big ask was a slinky). She was simply happy to be herself at six years of age. She was excited to enjoy whatever we prepared, without complaining about what we didn’t. She was too preoccupied with looking for the good things about herself and the day to notice what was missing. She didn’t angst about not being five anymore, or worry about what seven getting closer. She was simply present. She is able to be in the present with a purity that bewilders me.
I’m hardly ever fully present like that. I’m always thinking back, or thinking ahead. I’ve perfected the art of multi-tasking. And surely some of that has to occur for life to function, but I can’t help looking at her and thinking there’s something I’ve lost. Children have such a present radius of attention. They pick up anything and everything on the ground. They purposely smell things. They get excited about structures with no long-term potential (and that I already see as more clean-up, like towers made of tiny parts or forts made from all the pillows in our house).
Children discover more, and feel more, than adults. I used to wonder why that was. Some of it, I think, is simply that they are paying attention. They perceive the “realness” of things in a way we miss. It reminds me of what John Piper wrote once about what he learned from C.S. Lewis:
Lewis gave me an intense sense of the “realness” of things. The preciousness of this is hard to communicate. To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer being of things (“quiddity” as he calls it). He helped me become alive to life. He helped me see what is there in the world—things that, if we didn’t have, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He made me more alive to beauty. He put my soul on notice that there are daily wonders that will waken worship if I open my eyes. He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror.
C.S. Lewis refers to “quiddity” in his book Surprised by Joy when speaking of what he learned from one of his friends at Oxford:
But Jenkin seemed able to enjoy everything; even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemannic irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was.
When was the last time I rejoiced in something simply because it was being, so magnificently, what it was? I am far too quick to judge, to compare, to assume, to move on. To speak in inductive terms, I am far too quick to move from observation to interpretation. But part of interpreting life rightly is observing properly. Part of living for God’s glory is being whatever you are being as magnificently as you can, and enjoying it. Part of receiving God’s grace is realizing it exists in the moment. God does not promise grace for whatever future we may be imagining or worrying about; he promises us grace for today, if we are alive to the present enough to see it.
