God be in my head...

After I wrote my last entry in this blog, I was reminded of the time I taught religious education to first graders in Australia.  One year, my class really liked singing, and we learned children's hymns and rounds and Taize chants, but their absolute favorite was "God be in my head."


Six year olds are concrete thinkers.  Image and metaphor are alien to them; they need to know God in tangible ways.  And so we sang this beautiful blessings with actions.  As they touched their heads, their eyes, their mouths, their hearts, and yes, their ends (the occasion of much laughter), they were making a connection between the God about whom they learned and to whom they prayed, and the incarnate God who cares about our heads and eyes and mouths and hearts and even our ends.


We adults like to think that we understand images and metaphors.  But I suspect that deep down, most of us yearn for the concrete faith that characterizes six year olds. We need a God who is in our greying hairs and presbyopic eyes - as well as our understanding, looking, speaking, and thinking!