Pearlbamboo's Adventures In The Big City VII
The Little Boy Worrying About Armegeddon
He was a little boy, standing tall as the middle of my chest, chisled face the color of coffee with a little milk, dressed in suit and tie, carrying a bookbag, a miniature man. On my way to the store I'd seen him standing with two women, one neighbor and one who must have been his mother whom I'd not seen before.
Crossing the street on my return, I saw him standing alone outside one of the ground floor apartments, its door shut. I stopped for a minute asking him if he was OK and what he was doing. In a solomn voice, he confided that he was watching the police bust across the street on the other corner - two cop cars, lots of young men of color sitting on the curb, hands behind their heads, while the cops checked jackets and backpacks. His voice was quiet, as if he'd never laughed, so I told him a knock-knock joke and he flashed a smile that hung on his face for a second before it was gone. He told me he was eight years old, but I would have guessed a small ten or eleven given his mature air.
In the middle of asking him what his favorite subject was at school, he asked me if I wanted something to read. To be polite I said yes, curious. His mom handed him two copies of The Watchtower through the door. As he handed them to me, he asked, "Do you believe in the trinity?" I had to allow as how I didn't, and elaborated a little, saying I did when I was younger, but when I got older I found the teachings of Buddha fit the way I wanted to live my life more than Christianity did, in peace and harmony and always kind and compassionate to others, likening that to what was at the heart of what Jesus taught.
"Well, the Bible says that if you are not serving the lord, you are serving the devil...." Looking carefully at him with a soft face, I told him that I didn't believe in the devil either. That I believed that I lived a life in accordance with the best teachings of several religions, that I didn't need the idea of the devil to keep me in line, that if there really were a god, he or she would love me because I tried to live right, no matter whether I went to church or not. I told him about the kids I'd taken in when they were in trouble, the people I help, told him that more than once religious people had told me that I was more Christian than most Christians because of the way I lived my life, though I never went to church or even prayed. He continued to hold on to his solomn face.
I made one hand into a tight fist, the other hand curled around it, telling him that at the heart of what Jesus taught were important values, love, peace, compassion, and that my fist represented the heart of those teachings, my other hand moving away finger by finger, one finger the devil, another the trinity, the church... peeling away what have always seemed to me to be trappings rather than the heart of things.
He focused himself fiercely, looked up at me and asked, "Do you believe in Armageddon?" Once again I had to allow as how I did not, and circled round again to the thought that religious groups that focus on such things as Armegeddon were missing the heart of Christianity's true message." I asked him if he had understood what I was saying about the heart of things. He had.
And so I told him that he reminded me of Junius Wilson, a famous black man at a famous school named Harvard and how he might have been as a little boy, a little philosopher/social scientist in training, carefully decyphering the world. I asked him if he had heard of sociology. "Social studies is my favorite subject, then english then math...." "Sociology is what it's called when you study social studies in college and people who study that teach us a lot about the world," I told him, always hoping to plant seeds for dreams in children. I told him about comparative religion courses, ways to look at the teachings of other religions as something an educated person ought to know, even if one held closely to one's own, about philosophy, anthropology, while he studied my face, studied my words, saying he wanted to go to college. I encouraged him in that.
Then I told him that I had really enjoyed talking with him, that he seemed to be very smart and very interested in understanding the world around him, for I could not tell him that I was worried about his lack of an eight year old's smiles and sense of playfulness, hoping that some place would open in him to let lots of joy in, some smiles out.
He looked up at me, his face composed, holding a tiny hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth and said, "I've really really enjoyed talking with you too," no mere politesse, I think; it was genuinely meant. His mother opened her door, told him it was time to get ready for bed. I introduced myself, telling her what a smart son she had and walked the rest of the way to my doorway and climbed the stairs, wondering why he didn't smile, that little bright boy in a suit with his bookbag, watching the bust across the street and worrying about Armegeddon....
pearlbamboo
copyright e.p. hodges
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