There’s this concept in Montessori and other similar educational philosophies called “false fatigue” that I think about a lot. Basically, at least as I learned about it in regard to religious environments for children, the idea is that a child enters a room [describe room more]. The child spends some time looking around and doing some initial work, interacting with some of the materials that are there prepared for them. And then after this initial work, there’s a period called “false fatigue,” when the child might get kind of hyped up or whiny or just wander around, or even complain that there’s nothing to do.
Generally, adults who have observed these kinds of classrooms and environments notice that if they give the child space to get through this time, by giving them space and not intervening too heavily, the child often ends up entering into a period of deeper engagement with some material, often a new one or one that becomes particularly meaningful. I’ve seen this happen lots of times too in my experience in Montessori-based religious education, and it’s really powerful to see or even be part of a child entering that kind of holy space, where they deeply encounter a story about God, or an experience of God’s presence, or prayer.
I was talking with a friend sometime who was starting a Godly Play program, which is based in Montessori principles, and she was having a really hard time with some of the longtime Sunday School teachers who were objecting to the fact that kids sometimes got really silly, especially before or after they’d had what seemed like a very sacred moment. Like, as adults, they’d be trying to shepherd the kids into drawing a picture of a cross or something, and instead they’d want to draw pictures of monsters farting or something silly like that, instead of like, holy looking pictures of a cross or something.
My friend thought about it and said, well, haven’t you seen adults do that lots of times too? We approach something holy and it’s really powerful, and it’s too much, and we’re a little scared by it, so we do whatever the grown-up equivalent of drawing pictures of monsters farting is. And she’s totally right- we have plenty of other ways of avoiding what’s holy, what’s essential, what God is trying to teach us. We distract ourselves, or we busy ourselves, or we use a buffer of sarcasm or criticism, because sometimes the great and holy mysteries of this world, and of the Divine, are maybe just too big to take in all the time, or we have to wait for or get ready for the right moment.
So I thought of these things this week as I considered the great story of Moses today, standing on holy ground. God even warns Moses away from getting too close to that burning bush, and Moses hides his face from this mysterious fire. God is appearing to Moses in this great and mysterious way, and God is about to do a great thing- God is about to liberate God’s people.
And Moses, who as you may remember has had a complicated and even criminal past, understandably says, Who am I, to be a part of this great work? And God says, simply, I will be with you, and God gives Moses a sign, a promise, of what it will look like on the other side.
And Moses, to his credit, doesn’t run away from this scary and mysterious calling. In fact, he delves deeper. He asks a question, a huge question, maybe THE question- who are you, God? What is your name? Who should I say has shown up to set the people free, when the people ask?
And he receives an answer from God to this bold question, to this willingness to enter into the mystery. It’s an answer that runs right up against our human limits of language, and understanding. God says, I am who I am, at least according to this translation. Other translations say it as “I will be who I will be.” But none of these translations is completely right, according to the many people who have studied it. The footnote in my bible, dryly, says “because the Hebrew is grammatically problematic, these translations are uncertain.” Maybe those of us oriented toward precise language might say, there you have it, God, your name is not grammatically correct, could you clarify please?”
What we can know is that the root of this name that God gives Moses is in the verb “to be,” and that God’s name, in the Hebrew, seems to be more like a verb, and not a noun. Many Jewish traditions over the centuries have elected not to pronounce the name given here in Hebrew, instead substituting the word Lord. Perhaps there is wisdom in that approach- to know that we can never fully, in this life, know the name of God, that the nature of God is beyond our grammar and our human comprehension, even when God is revealing it to us. It is somehow too big and too essential to fit inside our definitions, our limits.
I think perhaps this story gives us some clues about our approaches to the great mysteries of our lives, especially those that we feel are beyond our limits and our categories, beyond our control, even the control of thinking we understand.
Because, even as they try to transcribe stories about these great mysteries, our Scriptures tell us over and over again that God keeps showing up to reveal Godself to God’s people. God, who is somehow the source and ending of our being, of all being, seems to want us to keep turning aside to examine these mysteries when they appear, like Moses did. And like Moses, God seems to want us to keep asking the questions, and to trust that God is inviting us to be a part of God’s great plan of liberation and life for God’s people. Certainly Moses’ participation in God’s plan was too much for him sometimes- he made all kinds of mistakes and got overwhelmed and got grumpy and frustrated, and he didn’t see the plan completed in his lifetime. And yet he trusted the encounters he had with God, including this one, and the promise that God made to him at the burning bush.
And he shared what he learned of God in those holy encounters, and helped God’s people to encounter God on their journeys as well.
So I wonder, in this season of getting ready to encounter the great mystery of the Crucifixion and of Easter, of Jesus’ death and resurrection, I wonder if there are places where you might observe some things that might be blocking you, or distracting you, or blocking or distracting us together, from the holy encounters and the holy questions that God is inviting us to. Perhaps there is a false fatigue that we need to work through- a wandering around, an agitation before settling on the big work, the deeper question of this season. Maybe there is a practice that you know, or that you suspect, can help you settle into prayer, into relationship with God, into openness. I know for me, it’s easy to distract myself with work, or all the big things in the world to read and worry about, and so when I put some boundaries around that time, more space for silence, and listening to God can open up. It’s even better when I spend time on purpose, journaling or praying while I walk, or talking with others about where I see God.
Sometimes I think playfulness can help- maybe the kids weren’t all wrong about the monster farts. Playfulness can help with curiosity, in the way Moses was curious. Moses turned away from the path he thought he was on, and the work he thought he was doing, in order to notice the presence of God in this burning bush. I know that’s hard for me- when I am going down a path, I am going to get to the end in the allotted time, dang it, and nothing will distract me. Cultivating that openness, that curiosity, that willingness to see God in unexpected places and ways- it’s not easy, and it takes intention. We have many ancestors who have helped develop some of those practices- different ways of praying, of studying Scripture, of worshiping, of living in community- but we have to discover them for ourselves, and find the ones that help us to enter as fully as we can into those mysteries in this moment, this year, in this situation.
And maybe there is just the practice of patience, and of trust, that in all our humanness, in our limits, in our learning, we still know that God will show up in God’s time and lead us. We can trust in God to help us to get ready, through the twists and turns of our lives, and we can trust God to show up, though if we look at the stories of our ancestors, we can guess that God may show up in a surprising way at a time we don’t expect.
The comforting thing is that, while there are things that can help us get ready for these great mysteries, we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s presence, God’s revelation to us. Moses was as imperfect and problematic a person as they come and yet, God gave him a place in God’s work, and God promised to be with him, and God was, all the way through, even in the midst of all of Moses’ ups and downs and mistakes. God promises to be with us too, and God has a place for us in that mysterious and ongoing life with God, in that ongoing plan of liberating God’s people. We are not alone- God, who was and is and is to come, God who is, God the great I am is with us, then and now and always.
Image by Piyapong Saydaung from Pixabay