Old days
Good times I remember
Fun days
Filled with simple pleasures
Drive-in movies
Comic books and blue jeans
Howdy doody
Baseball cards and birthdays
Chicago, Old Days

I still dream of the lake of peacefulness
The warm summer breeze
cause my life was so much simpler then
Street corners and tastee freeze

Take me back to chicago
cause hustlins not my style
L.a. was just a bit too hard
I wish I could be a child
Chicago, Take Me Back to Chicago

Truly I tell you,
whoever does not
receive the kingdom of God
as a little child
will never enter it
Jesus, Matthew 15:15

Not long ago, I read Krista Tippett’s book Speaking of Faith (which has recently been issued in paperback). One of the passages that moved me most was her discussion of “humility.” As I watched my children move through the world, I began to imagine what Jesus meant by humility. The humility of a child, moving through the world discovering everything anew, is closely linked with delight. This original spiritual humility is not about debasing oneself; it is about approaching everything new and other with a sense of curiosity and wonder. (231)

This past weekend I was driving from Duluth to Minneapolis and listening to a Chicago CD I had created to include my favorite songs by this band that was enormously popular when I was in junior high, high school and college. Funny what I remember about some of these songs. Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is? I remember listening to that on an old transistor radio when I was home sick from school one day, listening to it on WEBC from Duluth, which has now become an all-sports talk radio station. Colour My World was a song, that when played, you hoped the girl you asked to dance might say “yes.” If You Leave Me Now got a lot of airtime the fall of my senior year in high school, and I can almost feel fall in the air when I hear the song.

I really don’t remember Old Days (1975) or Take Me Back To Chicago (1977) from my high school or college days. I recall them from a later time, when I discovered an inexpensive cassette tape with a few Chicago songs on it, songs that I did not have in my record collection – If You Leave Me Now, Baby What a Big Surprise, Old Days, Take Me Back to Chicago and a few other songs. The first two were the familiar ones to me, but the latter two have stuck with me for quite some time.

Anyway, I was listening to this CD and to these songs, which are back-to-back on it, and it hit me. Jesus once said that we need to receive the kingdom of God like children. What child-like qualities did he have in mind? We may not be able to say for sure, but it may have something to do with the delight in simple things that we experience when we are young – drive-in movies, baseball cards and blue jeans, street corners and tastee freeze. As Krista Tippett reminds us, to be a child is to be open to the world, to receive it with curiosity and wonder, and delight.

Do you remember what it was like to delight in simple pleasures – the smell of the hard bubble gum when you opened a package of baseball cards, the thrill of getting the card of the best players on the team you most rooted for (Minnesota Twins – Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Jim Perry), riding your single speed bicycle along a dirt road (the Seven Bridges Road in Duluth), the first time you heard a song that really grabbed your attention (for instance, The Beatles, Blackbird on a record my sister bought through the Scholastic Book Club).

Then we grow up and experiences accumulate. It becomes more difficult, it seems, to be surprised or delighted. We recognize the complexity of the world. If we are fortunate as children, we only slowly learn about hunger and poverty and war – if we are fortunate. But once we hear the cries of the hungry, the anguish of war, we cannot silence them, or we should not. The kingdom of God also has something to do with hearing these cries and feeling the pain,and responding – children seem pretty good at understanding the pain of others, too. We cannot ignore the complexities of the world, and those who try and jam everything into an all-too-simple faith, a faith that does not grapple with the complexities and tragedies of life, should not be seen as models for the childlike quality Jesus is after.

Even so, there is something in the delight of the child, the ability to appreciate the small pleasures of life, that God encourages in us, I think. As many search to live more simply, a good place to begin is to nurture the child-like capacity to enjoy simple pleasures, to delight in them.

Old days
Good times I remember
Fun days
Filled with simple pleasures
Drive-in movies
Comic books and blue jeans
Howdy doody
Baseball cards and birthdays

I still dream of the lake of peacefulness
The warm summer breeze
cause my life was so much simpler then
Street corners and tastee freeze

With Faith and With Feathers,

David