Seeing Beyond Appearances*
The sibling children of Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age, ranging in age from six to eleven, had lived among the adults of their household long enough to acquire a critical attitude toward them all. As the narrator says: These elders, . . . having absolute licence to indulge in the pleasures of life, . . . could get no good of it. . . . They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees . . . ; yet they never did any one of these things. . . the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances they were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!) simply produced so many apples and cherries or it didn’t. . . They were unaware of Indians, nor recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!), though the whole place swarmed with such portents.
Needless to say then, when told that an uncle just returned from India was about to visit their home, they jumped to critical conclusions. They had met other uncles as inadequate as the adults they lived with. For example, “There was Uncle Thomas – a failure from the first. . . . his rooted conviction seemed to be that the reason for a child’s existence was to serve as a butt for senseless adult jokes . . .” Then there was the younger Uncle George, who at first showed some promise, allowing the children to introduce him to their pets, until he met their governess Miss Smedley, from which moment on “Uncle George’s manner at once underwent a complete and contemptible change”.
Their expectations of this new Uncle William were therefore low. Throughout the course of his stay they couldn’t quite make up their minds about him, but in the end (after he had departed for the train station accompanied under orders by their younger sibling Harold) the rest of the children were about to rate him negatively, when Harold returned and stood speechless before them. Then “slowly drawing his hand from the pocket of his knickerbockers, he displayed on a dirty palm one-two-three-four half-crowns!” “Buy what you like (Uncle William had said) – make little beasts of yourselves – only don’t tell the old people, mind!” Small Charlotte said dreamily, “I didn’t know that there were such good men anywhere in the world. I hope he’ll die to-night, for then he’ll go straight to heaven!”
All of which seems to show it’s not wise to fall into a persistently critical or unexpectant attitude toward everything and everyone. People and reality may surprise us if we can get over this habit we acquire so early in life of never giving them the benefit of the doubt. One scholar says that when Jesus (as he did last Sunday) looked with compassion upon the crowds around him, it doesn’t mean he looked upon them with piteous condescension but that he saw in them so many possibilities for good and longed to see them realized. He longed to see them become the prolific miracle each could be. In other words, he saw more than meets the usually critical or passive eye we all possess – even as Elisha and Jesus in today’s readings saw more than a few loaves and fishes but ample resources to feed a hundred, even five thousand souls.
One of the most difficult things confronting me in this extremely negative, scapegoating age in which we live is to pass from a critical or unexpectant to a Christic (merciful, hopeful, affirmative) perception of people. How important it is that I do so – if only to avoid the fate of our story’s repentant Selina, who “bewailed herself with tears and sobs,” because in her haste she had prematurely called Uncle William a beast.
*Living the Lectionary by G. Wood; Lit. Training Publications 2005 with permission.