Don't put away childish things: Jesus had a good reason for telling his followers to be like the little ones.

A SMALL GIRL BUBBLED OVER WITH ENTHUSIASM ABOUT the movie she'd just watched: Corpse Bride. Those who have seen Tim Burton's deliciously creepy romance know that Victor, the protagonist, must choose between the love of his more traditional above-ground fiance and the literally breathless adoration of his deceased "bride." The girl who had just seen the movie admitted that she recognized herself quite easily in the story.

Rather thoughtlessly, I replied, "Oh really? Did you see yourself as the fiance or the corpse bride?" The girl blinked up at me, astonished by the question. "As Victor," she said, as if that were obvious. And so it should have been, since it was Victor's story after all, and he was the one who had to choose between one kind of happiness and another.

I was forced to consider my unconscious bias as a grown woman trained to identify with characters of my own gender. Here was a girl too young to have learned that the "girl parts" of a story were the ones intended for her. According to the established social pattern and the elements of this particular story, she might be either the lover chosen or the one rejected. Although both the corpse bride and her rival were portrayed as strong-willed, determined women, in the end the hero role was inevitably meant for Victor, and the only real freedom in the tale was his. Why wouldn't anyone engaging such a story prefer to see himself or herself as the free chooser?

The little girl was right. She had chosen the better part in identifying with Victor. Her gender-blind participation in the story was more perceptive than mine, crippled by decades of accepting my place in the greater story around me. I breathed my usual prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of children in my life. Whenever I encounter them, I feel more hopeful about the world and the future.

AFTER ALL, IT'S NOT THE CHILDREN WHO HAVE CAUSED THE present crisis of global warming, nor have they established oppressive governments, started wars, ignored the needs of the poor, or piously condemned whole categories of their fellow human beings to hell. Children don't look away when someone is crying. They are always the first to ask the right questions: "Why are you sad?" and "What can I do to help?"

Some years ago the parish I attended was in an urban community where homeless people were an ever-swelling subset of the population. It offered a variety of services for them: meals, showers, bed tickets for the local shelter, and a standing opportunity to use the restrooms or even the pews for a nap out of the elements during the day.

Despite these services, or perhaps because of them, occasionally a mentally unbalanced person might come into the Sunday assembly during Mass and cause a minor disturbance. It was not unusual to see someone wander up and down the aisles during the liturgy, bowing and kneeling or muttering from time to time. An usher or other parishioner might find a discreet opportunity to guide such a person to an appropriate exit when necessary.

But one Sunday a ragged man strode into the assembly during the homily and started yelling rather loudly. Most of what he said was incomprehensible, but some of it was clearly aggressive. The priest at the ambo waited him out and then continued preaching as the man sank into a pew somewhere in the back, out of view.

At some point during the Eucharistic Prayer, however, the man rose again and headed up the center aisle toward the front of the church, this time wailing loudly. This was impossible to ignore, and some of us began to fear for the priest. As the man grew closer to the sanctuary, his wailing was punctuated by heart-wrenching sobs. Finally, as he reached the front pew, he collapsed into it, weeping. We all drew in a sigh of relief.

And then a tiny girl in a bright clean dress stepped out of her pew close to mine and headed in the direction of that tragically incapacitated person. I expected her parents to jump up and grab her but they didn't. The girl arrived in front of the still sobbing man and without hesitation pulled herself up into his lap and nestled there serenely. Instantly the sobs ceased. Both man and child sat there quietly throughout the long Communion lines, after which the child slipped off his lap and rejoined her parents as though it had been the most natural thing in the world for her to lend comfort to a stranger.

HOW COULD A CHILD DO WHAT NO ADULT DARED TO CONSIDER? The best I can come up with is that children haven't learned yet to limit their imagination and their compassion to what is reasonable and feasible. They don't know our fears and our prejudices. They haven't practiced for long years how to narrow their hearts and to care less.

Jesus often used children as the standard of behavior for his disciples. You must become like a child, he would say. Of such is the kingdom. When others tried to respect his privacy and need for rest, they restrained parents from bringing their children to Jesus. He rebuked them for this. "Let the children come to me," he insisted.

While his followers argued about their ambition for greatness, Jesus used a child to remind them to be last of all and the servant of all. "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me" (Mark 9:37).

These are words that glow in the darkness of our times. To receive a child is to receive the very presence of God! No wonder the ragged man in the church stopped weeping. If we recognized the Christ child in the gift of every young life, multitudes of children would not continue to perish every day around the world for want of food, medicine, and care.

Even folks without children of their own are sometimes asked to receive a child into their lives. In graduate school I used to observe a single mother in my building manage a full load of courses, a job, and her 6-year-old son, Chris. "How do you do it all?" I marveled. "With help," she admitted. "What are you doing on Wednesday nights?" Since she worked in the evenings, she explained, she passed her son around to various surrogate mothers each night until she got home. "Chris could be your Wednesday boy," she offered. I accepted before my brain became more engaged than my heart.

Having a Wednesday boy was sometimes inconvenient, at other times exhausting, but always an offer I'm glad I didn't refuse. Chris taught me not to put peas in the casserole, to stop at the swings whenever I walk through a park, to leave the dishes for later, and to live in the now as much as possible.

Chris also helped me to cultivate a sincere belief that there is a future worth growing into and not to view myself as stuck in any one place or state of mind. One day as he crawled around in my closet and upset my neat row of shoes, I heard him give a yelp of pleasure. "What now?" I asked mildly.

"Whose are these?" he demanded, dragging out an old pair of men's leather hiking boots. I admitted they were mine, though they hadn't been on my feet in years. "Can I have them?" he asked, his eyes shining. "But you can't wear them," I pointed out. "They're huge." With the purest faith I've ever heard confessed, he asserted, "But someday I'll be bigger." Looking down at skinny little Chris, whose "bedroom" was currently his mother's walk-in closet, it was hard to imagine. I gave him the boots.

CHRIS' MOTHER GRADUATED AND THE TWO OF THEM MOVED away. Ten years later, they came to visit at a retreat center where I was working. Though I hadn't seen either of them in all that time, Chris ran up the dirt path toward me as soon as he got out of the car. "My Wednesday Mom!" he shouted. His gangly teenage arms encircled me. He was a giant, surely every bit as big as he once told me he would be. If he still had the boots, they would now be too small.

My Wednesday son taught me to believe in the boots, and in the visions and insights of children. I hope someday to be as big as children dream of being and to live the freedom and the courage they demonstrate.