The seer who couldn’t spell “saw.”
There was a cosmos in the classroom. Tiny dust particles were illuminated by a shaft of angled afternoon sunlight, spilling in from slit windows near the ceiling. The Primary Three-Four composite class were quietly squirrelling away with their paint brushes, heads down, being creative. Not me. I didn’t even pretend to paint. I was transfixed by sparkly particles of paint mingled with human dust set free from the cupboard under the sink, now caught in invisible convection currents. I saw meteor showers, stars and fields of rocks in Saturn’s rings. When the dust passed through that beam of light, magic happened. My head rested on my hand, my elbow rested on the desk, and I looked upwards, heavens above.
Perhaps my teacher saw this and wanted to call me out of my trance. Perhaps her head had been down amongst her marking, and she blindly barked my name, incensed by the shoddy spelling of a boy with dyslexia, only he didn’t know it yet. Either way, I landed back to earth with a jolt.
“Howard! Espie!” (Note the staccato diction and cue a dramatic pause). “Stand to your feet!”
My chair screamed back across the tiles as I jumped to attention. It wasn’t long before my gluteus maximus muscles behaved as if they were perched on the handle of a fully operational pneumatic drill; twenty seven pairs of startled eyes all looking at you will have that effect. Some classmates looked on with compassion. Others sniggered, wishing there was popcorn to accompany the unfolding drama. A distant church bell began to ring; the wind blew a tumbleweed passed an undertaker hammering a nail and making a coffin. I’m only joking about that last sentence, but you get the picture. She (She? The cat’s mother? I know, but I want to protect her anonymity because I’ve forgiven her), my teacher, turned to train her sights on me.
“You can’t spell the simple three-letter word, ‘saw.’ Let me give you someone in Primary 4 who should know better one more chance. Howard, how do you spell the word ‘saw’.”
My face flushed bright red. I could feel my pulse in my fingertips, ear lobs and drums. My heart had burst from my chest and was swimming about in my mouth together with those little phonetical sounds that made up this word of only one syrupy syllable. My teacher only had to raise her eyebrow, that silently said, “Well?” and out leapt the wrong answer, gradually.
“C.” The boys at the top table giggled some more. I knew the game was up but had to keep going.
“A” the now deafening lub-dubs from my four ventricles made it difficult to speak. The tears were not far off if I wasn’t careful.
“U.”
“One out of three. Come to my desk and receive your punishment exercise.”
It was over as quickly as it began. The class returned to their brushes, library quiet, and I walked slowly to her desk to receive an A5 piece of paper with the word “saw” spelt correctly five times down the margin. I was to spell out the word twenty-five times and have my work signed by a parent before returning it to her in the morning.
This memory has become a place of healing recently, and I’d love to share it with you on this blog. I share it not to emphasise my story but to introduce you to the unceasing wonder of Jesus, whose redeeming love is unfathomable. I share what he has done for me and extend an invitation for you to know the same, regardless of how dark or deep your wounding might be.
I was not thinking about this childhood memory at all. What I have been increasingly aware of recently is a particular part of my personality. For the purposes of this blog, I have taken to name this part “Dutiful.” Dutiful is hard working and eager to please, particularly the matriarchal types of female in my life, even if it means putting his own will on the altar. He is pretty content as long as they are. He is a perfectionist and a right pain in the backside. “If a job is worth doing its worth doing right.” That’s his mantra. Yet, as he is working, there is this ever-present question. Is this good enough? Am I doing this okay? Dutiful is the kind of guy who likes to be a wingman. He plays second fiddle.
Don’t ever ask Dutiful to take the lead or to share a creative idea and head out over the parapet to see that idea come to life. You’ll only get shot down, he’ll say. Ironically, Dutiful’s the one with the gun holding every other part of me hostage. He is very close friends with my inner critic (and bosom buddies with procrastination). When these two team up, he becomes even smaller, childlike, or rabbit-like with ears down, wanting to hide. He is prone to second-guessing himself yet is the perfect mouthpiece for the critic. Can I let you into a little secret? This subpersonality has successfully dried up the frequency of my blog posts. Well, yes, Dutiful, coupled with the fact that Charlotte and I are thoroughly sleep-deprived caring for a wee one-year-old who is still up several times a night, and all our remaining energies are going into life here at Greenwood Retreat, on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula.
Anyway, back to the dawning awareness around dear Dutiful, I began to lift these personality traits to God in prayer one night. I turned out the light, but sleep was far from me. I was still mulling things over. That’s when it happened. It was more than a dream. It was more than a picture in my mind’s eye. I don’t even know what to call it, a vision? A visitation? I don’t know, and it’s not relevant. All I know is that I asked for God’s help, and he came.
I saw (oh, the glorious irony! There’s that word again!), yes, I saw Jesus walking in what looked like warm tropical water. Because of the weight of his glory, all I could see was his feet, his beautiful nail-pierced, bare feet. He wanted me to see them. He wanted me to watch how the waters interacted with them. There was no sand underneath. He was walking on these waters. I couldn’t look at any other part of him. His glory was too great. The warmth, the brilliance, his love, it was too much to bear. Yet, here I was walking with him over these waters. We were going somewhere. When I saw myself next to him, that’s when the penny dropped that it wasn’t water at all. It was light itself. We were walking on light. I know that sounds trippy, but I promise, Lucy and her diamonds were nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t taken any drugs, but it was the best of highs. He is the highest of highs! It’s just who he is and what he can do. The Psalmist says of him, “In your light we see light.”
I don’t know how it happened, but we were back in that classroom on that fateful day. All the memories. All the feels. They all reappeared. The dust particles were still above us, and the afternoon sun was still streaming in, only there was no one else in the classroom- just Primary 4 me, Jesus and 42-year-old me. Older me was here to watch him work, yet I knew he was working in me. Like the inner rings in a tree, we all carry our inner child deep down near the heart of us, near the start of us. And the body bears the burden, carrying all our wounded memories of where we have sinned and have been sinned against. The gift of repentance is found in the kindness of Jesus’ eyes who draws us up and out of ourself and into him.
As I looked at Jesus looking at Primary 4 me, two thoughts immediately sprung to life in my mind. First came the dawning awareness that he took delight in my enjoyment of this cosmos in miniature. Far from taking the teacher’s side and bringing me back down to earth, he saw my daydreaming as worship, and he received it as such. Following hot on the heels of this revelation, I understood how we came to be in this classroom. We hadn’t entered the room through the door. We had walked down this dust-filled avenue of light. When I thought this, Jesus looked across at adult me and smiled and nodded. Then, he turned his full gaze to little Primary 4 me. He sat down on a child’s chair so he could be eye level with this younger part of me. I could see fearful, second-guessing me through his eyes. Yet, I would hear his words in my adult chest cavity. He said to the little boy before him, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made.” Fearfully. Wonderfully. Two magnificent words, but the light bulb switched on above the notion of being made.
I have been made, and I don’t need to make a name for myself. I don’t need to worry about making mistakes along the way. They are inevitable but not definitive. I have been made. As I allow myself to behold Jesus beholding me, he continues to make me and remake me. The Christian is being forever changed from one degree of glory to the next, no matter how hellish the themes in our story. Such glory works retroactively down through all our past and into our future. The self was never made to go it alone. Indeed, the self does not exist by itself. It is always in a relationship. With what, with who? Now that’s the question.
Was this muggy, dusty classroom the place where Dutiful had his genesis? Perhaps, or perhaps this part of my personality was already present within, and this experience just helped reaffirm a pained outlook on the world; all is not safe, all is not well. Therefore be on your guard and learn to hide. However, after this encounter with Jesus, Dutiful has changed, and so too has his name. He is now Delighted. He is a lot younger and more unrestrained, content to enjoy the spilling afternoon sunlight, the smell of fragrant lilies, and the way a squadron of goldfinches and yellowhammers dog fight their way through the branches of a forest. All the little details, seen and savoured, lifted up as an act of worship into the smile and nod of Jesus. What brings an even more terrific shriek of childlike delight is this little seer who couldn’t spell “saw” is called to be a writer! O’ the irony and redemption of the Kingdom of God! A writer of blogs and books, sermons, poems and guided retreats. To simply tell of Jesus. For he does all things well, and he is making all things new. He, not we(dear fellow church leader), is building his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Therefore relax, and let us stand at his shoulder and learn to see and behold him at his work and cry out with the angels and the archangels, in their ascending and descending, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”