Lyn Burr Brignoli Commonweal September 10, 1999

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There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning....
1 Corinthians 14:10

Music is quite effective, I am discovering. I have a tape recorder that looks like a lunch box with a sing-along microphone that looks like a little ice cream cone. The children take turns holding the microphone. Dragen's favorite song is "Thank You, Jesus." The refrain goes, "Thank you, thank you, Jesus in my heart." When we get to the part about the heart, Dragen grins, points to his chest, and pretends he is strumming a guitar. Dragen loves to sing.

Although Christina doesn't sing, she still likes to hold the microphone. The first time I put on the Taize song, "Jesus, Remember Me When You Come into Your Kingdom," Christina became very still, holding the microphone with one hand, listening as if she were hearing something I couldn't hear myself. After a while a deep chuckle came out of her belly, and she leaned over and kissed me. I don't know what is happening inside Christina's small head or her uncoordinated body when she lets her glasses slip down over her nose. She kind of cocks her head to one side, and a peaceful, radiant look comes over her. This music is her favorite part of our time together.

In the room there are two crucifixes; one is quite magnificent-about eighteen inches high, carved ivory in a glass case. Part of our ritual is to identify these figures of Jesus on the walls. We say,

"Who's that?"
"It's Jesus."
"Is that the cross?"
"Yes, that's the cross."

I later realized that Dragen identifies with Jesus' pain. Dragen, who has had thirty-seven operations in his six short years, who was born with his bladder outside his body, and whose one leg is two inches shorter than the other, has probably endured more physical pain than most of us can imagine. His mother told me that from time to time he doubles up in pain from one medical problem or another. When this happens, she holds him, and they pray for all the children in the world who are worse off than he is, the children who have nothing to eat.

Dragen seems to be entering into the crucifixion. He looks at the cross and assumes the body posture with the contorted face, just for a second or two. I began to see that Jesus is "talking" to Dragen with his body. Broken body to broken body, they are speaking together. Dragen is experiencing Jesus by way of his pain, and I, in my limited understanding, wanted to take that away from him. I didn't know what I was doing, because I didn't know what God was doing. This experience has opened my eyes; I can see that, not only in this small room, but everywhere, when God speaks, he speaks to each of us in precisely the language we can understand. He is speaking to Dragen and to Christina in ways uniquely suited to each of them.

No matter what I do, it seems, I can't teach Christina how to kneel. Nor can she make the sign of the cross herself. She loves it when I make the sign of the cross over her, though. Finally, after a period of several weeks, it occurred to me that Christina may never understand how to kneel. But somehow, I don't think God cares if Christina ever learns to kneel or to make the sign of the cross.

My job, as I am coming to see it, is not so much to teach these children the rubrics of faith, as it is just to be with them, to express my faith as relationship: In the words of an Orthodox priest, "God is not an idea to be grasped, but a person to meet." Dragen and Christina bring me back to the "heart"; they remind me that the core of our faith is simple. It is so simple that even eleven-year-old Christina, who can barely make sounds for words, who, for the most part, echoes rather than converses, seems to be responding. She smiles, even giggles when she says the name, "Jesus."

After about four months of "teaching" these children, I was told by Christina's mother that Christina is starting to put words together to make sentences. Whether this is a direct result of our time together, I can't say for sure. But certainly, I am coming to experience each of these children as a word of God; in fact, God is speaking to me in a whole new language, or should I say, in two new languages.

Lyn Burr Brignoli is a free-lance writer and poet who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.