Not so Easy by Angela Townsend

I have renounced the fear of being a simpleton. This was a long time coming.

Like many bullies, the fear cloaked its meanness with “meaning well.” It was concerned for my well-being, my dignity, even my ability to get ahead in this world. Like most children, I stayed ahead of it as long as I was honest. 

We sang “This is My Father’s World” on Sundays, and God unwrapped Mondays like souvenirs. It was my default to be wonderstruck. My mother walked around with a copy of The Encyclopedia of Bible Quotations, and the section on “Love of God, the” was so frequently consulted it had turned soft. This was our field guide to hours and minutes, and the days were never long enough for their own light.

There were pilgrimages to the local library, a hazard to our tote bags as we pushed the twenty-book limit. There were school days of shaking hands with Saturn and sonnets and new friends, like Sanjeet from California. California! Our Father’s world contained a California, and cheetahs, and Mrs. Torelli’s talkative eyes, and words like “ubiquitous.” I blazed home a breathless comet, tongue-tied and tumbling forth the ludicrous lavishment of events. 

There was mozzarella in the macaroni, ladybugs on the windowsill, and a mother who marveled at every mercy as though it were the first.

“We dance while the music is playing,” she said, equal parts plan, promise, and prophecy. When our jig turned to dirge and all the polka dots went pale, we knew Who would teach us new steps. 

This served us well when I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at nine. Dr. Pipo, the endocrinologist who looked like Paul Simon, told me I would have a wonderful life and ordered me to stop growing. (I could already kiss him on the head.) The medical students who followed him like goslings took naps in my hospital room, then brought me tottering towers of Jell-O’s. My I.V. became Irving Victor, an eminent gentleman duly greeted by all. My father returned from every restroom visit laden with stuffed cats from the gift shop.

Tears came unbidden, my tiny fingers smudged with blood and my tiny doctor unable to let me eat graham crackers. The hospital let my mother sleep in a cot beside me, but God didn’t let her offer easy answers. 

When the horrible meets the holy, simple is stronger than easy. Our Lord loved me without limit. Our Lord was with me in blood and bewilderment. Our Lord would carry His child. We would carry on dancing. This was our Father’s world.

“Love of God, the” defined of our lives.

Our joy defied my diagnosis, and I got to know the rebel side of my Lord. Ours was a God who paused for bleeding women and ran towards ragged children. The braggadocious backyard toads belched His humor, and the existence of Diet Coke bubbled His compassion. When the hoodlum boys at the back of the bus waxed tender, asking about my blood glucose, I felt God’s personal interest. When the perfect pink dress disguised my insulin pump, I felt God’s fatherly protection.

When my mother made me cat quilts and castles of sugar-free ice cream, I heard my complicated life as a hymn. 

I had no idea my joy was unheard of.

Like most lies, the bully had a certain sheen. I couldn’t see that it was all serpent scales, joined together as airtight arguments. I heard concern and assumed it was kindness. I heard rhythm and assumed it was music.

Scolding came softly, but the message was clear. I was going to get hurt if I kept getting excited about everything. I was going to get laughed at if I kept going on about meteors and sea lions and willow trees. I was going nowhere if I didn’t board the dutiful bus of the bored and the blasé. There was a free set of lenses for every rider. The fare was your childish fanfare. Just press it into the driver’s hand and don’t look back.

And for adulthood’s sake, don’t keep looking for God among gerbils and geraniums. You don’t really expect the Maker of the Universe to be elbow-deep in hours and days, do you?

Are you some kind of simpleton?

The weight of the world had been unable to ground me at nine, but the desire to be weighty plucked me from the sky. I traded music for war drums, thrumming to be accepted. I worked hard to be easy, caging the exuberance that unsettled the edgy and the eminent. 

I could no more snuff my delight than I could unspool my double helix from my mother’s DNA. I still talked to the moon and clapped for Canada geese. I felt Jesus’ joy when I wrote and the Spirit’s swaddling when blood sugars betrayed me. But my song was not for the stage, my hope was too homespun for public hearing. I wore heavy boots to keep my airhead from losing gravity.

I developed disclaimers. 

“I love big, and I’m not for everybody” – mumbled when my affection landed on its face.

“All heart, no brains” – uttered as an apology when exuberance escaped like steam.

“I’m just a simpleton” – smudged like ash on my forehead when eyes rolled.

Like most fears, the bully finally overplayed its hand. On the day a scowling man called my mother a “dotard,” I shot out of my boots like stardust. 

“She is the wisest woman I’ve ever known.” My anger was music. “She is hope on two legs.” I danced with rage. “She has made it simple for me to believe in a loving God.”

Across space and time, a nine-year-old girl in a hospital bed clapped her hands.

Like most resurrections, mine came without a press release. I would open the music box for a moment, then slam it back shut. Rejoicing wriggled out with wry confidence. I unearthed my voice between my mother’s smile and my Father’s sky.

Like all resurrections, mine was not for me alone. Fitfully I remembered the generosity of delight. If I was brave enough to rejoice, someone else might remember. If I was simple enough to sing praise, someone else might find harmony. If I was willing to be small, someone else might stop belittling her blessings. 

It wouldn’t be easy.

I wouldn’t be alone.

In the history of our Father’s world, there have been no braver simpletons than the mystics. The thesaurus may disagree, but these words are synonyms. No less a light than Hildegard of Bingen declared herself a “feather on the breath of God,” anchored enough to be airborne, wise as a child of the Cherisher. 

Wonderstruck from the mountaintop to the Monday, such little ones are large with life. They point us to the Power and the Presence in the blood and the begonias and the mothers and the mercies.

They are not afraid to be simpletons and dotards, too much and too small.

They see Jesus in homegrown tomatoes and mornings without pain, long-haired cats and harmonica solos. They are excited to have been invited to hours and days, a rebel vanguard here to save the edgy and the exhausted. 

They remember that every chapter is contained in the pages “Love of God, the.”

They are calling me to be brave and bewildered again, and their voices make me dance.

The music, it turns out, is always playing. 

As Development Director at Tabby’s Place, Angela Townsend bears witness to mercy for all beings. Angie has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and a B.A. from Vassar College. She has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 32 years, giggles with her mother every morning, and delights in cats and the moon.