About twenty years ago, I fell in contemplation in front of a stone face of the temple of Angkor. His two eyes were closed on an inner illumination, and his lips beamed with a smile of joy.
And now a thought hatched from my depths, and I heard resounding in me: “You are a child of knowledge. » I welcomed this word (which also seemed to be knowledge) and I entrusted it to silence. Didn’t Jesus say: “Let the little children come to me! » ? If this word were true, it would simply reveal its meaning one day.
“The Child I Was”
This day came, last month, in all its obviousness. I waited in a blue-painted waiting room, overlooking a garden bathed in light. In front of me, no stone face, but a small wooden chair for a child, with a straw seat. I like to wait without waiting for anything more, because these suspended times allow our souls to freely surrender to their creative fantasy, and they often bear amazing fruit. In fact, this small empty chair has been filled with a great presence. I was no longer alone in the room… A child was there, seated in front of me: the child that I was.
I strongly believe in the hidden life. Our world seeks to distract us from the essential, turning our gaze to what is happening on the so-called front of the stage. But what is played out there, “in the great assembly”, contributes less to the salvation of the world than what is experienced, sheltered from the spotlight, in our interiority or our intimacy.
Simple and small gestures
A word of love whispered in the ear of a lover, a hand placed on the hand of a dying person, a glass of water held out to a child weigh in the balance. It is these simple and small gestures that open, in our hidden lives, the “narrow door” of the Kingdom. This wooden chair handing me its mirror, I plunged into its gaze, falling back into the cache of childhood.
I saw my blue room where I slept alone upstairs, listening to the creaking of furniture and the gurgling of pipes. I saw my white rabbit stamping his foot and jumping on my bed to ask me for petting behind his ears. I also saw my hair from Venus, these capillaries that my mother entrusted to me so that I would acquire a green thumb. Day after night, I was “born” from this room, from this rabbit, from these ferns, which I took care of and “gave birth” to in mutual love.
Towards fertile and creative joy
And if that was the meaning of this word of knowledge? Have the vocation, not only to know, but also to “come together”? To be a child, not of knowledge, but of “co-birth”?
What is the use, in fact, of being a sum and baggage of knowledge, if our encounters do not allow us to give each other life? Aren’t we on earth to meet each other, and be born from each other? The Good News, is it not the fertile and creative joy of this co-birth, which allows us together to “make all things new”?
Born and reborn together
“To make all things new” is indeed the urgency of the times… Our world is collapsing like a tower of Babel heavy with its knowledge and eager for recognition, having forgotten that the essential thing is to be born and reborn together ad infinitum. . Living between men and women, between generations, between cultures and traditions, but also between Earth and Sky, between visible and invisible worlds, between mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms.
By reminding me of my blue room, my white rabbit and my hair like Venus, this wooden chair showed me the “narrow door” to this fruitful complicity: the talent of children of knowledge to co-born in mutual love!
Charlotte Jousseaume is a writer. She leads writing workshops and has published Silence is my joy (Albin Michel), mystical quartet (Stag), And the mirror burned (Deer) and I walked on the foam of the sky (Salvator).
Charlotte Jousseaume: “Our world seeks to divert us from the essential”