Two paths on a beach: about this photograph

I wanted to begin by telling you about this photograph and what it has to do with minstry and children. It is a vacation photo from a family trip a few summers ago to Assateague Island in Virginia (inspired by a two generation fixation with the book, Misty of Chincoteague).

This is the last photo in a series that chronicles an afternoon of playing on the beach. I started drawing a giant labryrinth in the sand. That is an easy task if you have a few miles of pristine beach to start over if you mess up. However, this one, I took my time. I thought about it. The rest of my family ran here and there, dancing with the waves. I was really concentrating, so I didn’t notice my youngest daughter, about four, starting some little creation of her own several yards away. She didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother her. We just kept our heads down working.

When I finished drawing I started walking around the labyrinth. When I came to the end, and looked around a bit, I saw my daughter’s own little spiral, both whimsical and serious, just a short distance from mine. She walked her labyrinth, too. Then the whole family joined in, walking around and around the spirals. (I’m sure we looked a little strange from a distance.) Then my little daughter, carefully and seriously walked around the big labyrinth I had drawn. One path in, one path out–no way to get lost. When she came to the center, she threw up her hands and “click” my husband snapped this photo.

Dr. Jerome Berryman, creator of the Godly Play movement, offers children’s response to the expanse of the ocean. Children, when faced with a view of the ocean, so vast and awesome, they turn their backs and dig their own hole, their own little ocean. The daughter, when faced with her mother’s labyrinth, will make her own–and maybe walk her mother’s path in her own way and time.

Walking beside children on a their spiritual journey is a profound honor. Adults feel the need to model a Godly life, guide toward the best ways to live, steer away from things dangerous. Do we think our own path, directs our child’s feet? Maybe instead, it is their skipping, kicking and dancing on our well designed paths, that change us, not them. This joy and fearlessness in the face of the great expanse of ocean, in praise and thanksgiving for the One that creates, redeems and sustains it all–isn’t that the real path?