How Newborns Nurture Our Natures

Sebastian

I looked tenderly into the face of our grandson, Sebastian, as he slept.  He was barely a week old but had a full head of hair and, anachronistically, a look of old-man wisdom, as well as an air of calm self-assurance.  Christmas music was playing softly in the background, snow falling lightly on branches outside the window, as the lights on the tiny Christmas tree in our daughter’s temporary home in Germany twinkled through the needles and the simple hand-strung garlands of popcorn. 

My whole attention was riveted on this tiny man.  His sleep, far from a catatonic stupor, was alive with little squeaks and grimaces, with an occasional expressive arch of a brow, and with lips which alternated between making gentle sucking noises and turning up just so to reveal subtle smiles.  He was anything but still in slumber.  He quivered and twitched.  He rolled his little head back and over.  He stretched like a cat and then relaxed completely into a pattern of steady delicate breathing. 

Bianca

Sebastian was born in November of last year and even though he is adorable and in some ways cuter and more fun (e.g. he can interact with us when we Skype with him in Germany) he quickly grew out of the newborn stage--it is so fleeting.  However, we have a brand new grandchild.  Bianca Kate was born in Baltimore just a little over a week ago and I, although I missed her birth (I sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and we were recording an album all last week), I flew in yesterday to see her.  The minute I picked her up (she slept through the first several hours of my time with her) I felt that renewed awe.  She weighs virtually nothing and yet she is whole--a complete person.  I put my ear near her miniature mouth and hear her tiny soft breathing.  Her cherubic little face is the paragon of peace.  Somewhere in her somnolence something stirs, she puckers up her face, emits a sad little squeak, and she softens my stony soul.  Her newborn-ness works its marvelous magic on me and within mere minutes I am simply smitten.  How does that happen?  One moment I didn't even know her, and the next moment I loved her.  Up to now I have lived a whole contented life without her, and then suddenly my existence would be empty and tragic if she wasn't there.

Newborns

I realize that holding a sleeping newborn is a rare and fleeting mercy that most people in the world seldom experience since new babies are rightly ensconced in the secure sanctum of their immediate family home until their mother recovers and their immunity against disease is solidified.  Nevertheless, the experience is transcendent.  It somehow melts the ancient barriers of fear and distrust we adults erect early in our lives to protect ourselves from our inherent vulnerabilities.  The experience somehow softens even the most jaded jags of our jaundiced natures and reawakens faith, hope, and a kind of simple unguarded love forgotten since childhood.

I can’t help but believe that if this experience could somehow be made more universal it would cure many of our culture’s dysfunctions and diseases.  Imagine, for instance, the transformative effect the simple act of holding a sleeping newborn could have on shut-in sorrow, on political pompousness, or on incarcerated intransigence. 

Children don’t come to this world as empty vessels waiting to be filled.   Watching newborns has convinced me that the veil of forgetfulness, which ultimately wipes away their memories of their prior life with God, is not yet entirely drawn.  They are mute, but filled with grace and understanding.   At one point Jesus called together little children “and he did loose their tongues, and they did speak unto their fathers great and marvelous things, even greater than he had revealed unto the people; and he loosed their tongues that they could utter.”  (3 Nephi 26:14)  Because they lack language but are filled with “great and marvelous things”, newborns emanate their wisdom through their countenances and from their spirits.  As we hold and observe them a bit of that grace transfers to and grows within us.  Newborns are God’s gift of renewal and redemption to a weary and wayward world.