Babies Make Me Feel Close to God
by Simcha Fisher in Family on Wednesday, July 01, 2009 6:00 AM
Have you heard someone coo, “Oooh, babies make me feel so close to God”?
Bleahh.
What the heck is that supposed to mean? Being with a baby makes you feel warm, cozy, gooey, and sentimental—and that’s what divinity means to you? Nuh-uh, as we used to say in second grade.
Don’t get me wrong: I have always liked babies. Even back when I hated everyone, including myself, I could see that being with a baby was a pretty good deal, at least in small doses. They’re adorable, they love you, and you can put them wherever you want them to be.
And truly, I had at least four babies of my own before a certain idea started to creep in. This revelation will really floor you: babies are different from other people. I’m not just talking about pants size, either.
It wasn’t until I had about six babies (well, they weren’t all babies at the same time—only about half of them were) that I caught myself feeling, from time to time, like I was in the presence of God when I held a baby.
At first, I thought I felt this sensation because, having come through the purifying fires of motherhood for a certain number of years, I was closer to God myself. I was starting to be able to identify God-type things that were happening to me. (I didn’t say I was especially articulate while thinking this over, mind you. You spend your day hunched over an endless convoy of smelly bottoms, and tell me how your theological treatises gets worded.) Babies teach us patience, gentleness, and self-denial ... you know, holy things.
I also figured that being with a baby reminded me of how we ourselves are supposed to behave, in relation to God. You know that look a baby gives you: utterly trusting, utterly open, dependent, and unselfconscious.
We are supposed to be like little children before God the Father, right? Also, young babies do that slightly eerie thing where they smile up at an empty corner of the room. I can’t help it—I always check it out, in case I get a glimpse of what they’re seeing! I haven’t caught anything yet, but they sure look like they’re looking at something—something really good!—and it’s not just that babies are dopes who grin at the wall.
And even the screamiest baby will give us moments when we are overwhelmed with gratitude at this amazing gift of a child. Anyone who paid any attention in catechism class will eventually realize that God is the one to whom we are supposed to feel grateful.
All these ideas are valid. But there is something else:
Infants still have God’s presence lingering on them.
I sometimes feel it so strongly that it scares me for a minute, because it’s not something from this world. It feels like anticipation, though I know that I’m not waiting for anyone or anything. I know, in fact, that the baby who brought this sensation on is growing older by the second, and that the Presence is wearing thinner.
While these clouds of glory linger, though, a very young baby is the closest thing on earth that there is to God, because there is nothing else on earth which is both rational (at least potentially) ... and utterly innocent.
As I keep telling my kids, everything that is good comes from God, and babies are very recent arrivals! A baby is “close” to God in two senses: close because babies haven’t yet traveled far from Him, since their creation. And close because they resemble Him still.
And that is where the sense of anticipation comes from: because, with a baby, God is near. And when God is near, the best part of us wants Him to come closer still.
—Simcha Fisher mothers her eight “babies” in New Hampshire. She also blogs at Inside Catholic.
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