We’re waiting for Someone. Lively conversations swirl across the aisles as we wait as politely impatient as a gathering of Christian educators can be. The children scattered among us actually seem more relaxed. We’ve got convictions, we believe whole-heartedly in education be it public school or Sunday School. We’ve passed under a banner to take our seats, “Hand in Hand with Children” and a tree, a cloud and a rainbow formed from children’s hands sets the theme.
When our Someone enters, the room goes silent then explodes with the sound of clapping. We’re on our feet, putting our hands together for the man making his way to the platform. Mister Rogers has arrived. A longish introduction is forgiven once he scans the room and greets us. What he says is ordinary, but what happens isn’t. Regardless of our age, we’re transformed into children on the edge of our seats with wide-open eyes and eager ears. I have to remind myself to breathe.
Mister Rogers reminds us why we are where we are, and in reminding, recalls us to our Calling. “Anytime that you are with a child, remember that the space between you is Holy Ground!” What he says is simply true and so that truth endures.
We’re rooted in Holy Ground. Every child. Anytime. Remember. I hear his voice as I read the Isaiah passage in this season: “Then a shoot will sprout from the stump of Jesse; from Jesse’s roots, a branch will blossom.” (Isaiah 11: 1) Grafted onto this text is the story that he tells us in closing. Mister Rogers shares how he began to write children’s operas. It started with sharing with his son at bedtime. At the age of four, his son is in awe of trees, God and Trees are really real to him and are Holy One, so he creates a song/prayer for his son. He asks us if we’d like to hear it. His rhetorical questions are never a matter of rhetoric. “Yes”, we say, “O yes!”, and Mister Rogers begins to sing. “Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree…”
He sings the word “Tree” 12 times. That’s it. That’s all. One song. One prayer. One word and a melody I teach my students to sing 30 years later. Tree. Tree. Tree.
I find the evidence rooted everywhere at Drew University, long known as “the Forest”. We have acorns carved in our chapel higher than the candles or the cross and it’s not uncommon to find organic altars like this one offered by unknown Drewids.
“Tree. Tree. Tree”. This is Holy Ground: a tree, a child, a prayer to sing. This makes theological sense out of an image of a human fingerprint and an image of a tree ring.
Imago Dei.
And this next image tragically captures what happens when someone attempts to destroy this Imago Dei in every child born and all creation.
Mister Rogers embodied this intimate life-giving relationship, this holy ground between each and every child, tree, neighborhood, culture and faith tradition. D.L. Mayfield writes of the Christmas window Rogers designed for Hallmark. “He went back to his home in Pittsburgh and concocted a design plan. His window front display would be this: a Norfolk Island pine tree, the height of a three- or four-foot-tall child. No ornaments or decorations, just a simple green tree, planted in a clear glass Lucite cube so that onlookers could see the roots of the tree. And in front of it there was to be a plaque that simply said: “I like you just the way you are.”[i]
In this season when trees come inside, rootless and ready to be decorated top to bottom, may Isaiah and Mister Rogers remind us of our need for holy ground and the Child who is our Tree of life.
[i] D.L. Mayfield, “Mister Rogers wasn’t just nice: He wanted to take down consumerism., The Washington Post, 11/22/2019