Making the high places plain

The entropy machine that is our daughter is only getting more efficient as she gets bigger and stronger.  Nothing that sits on top of anything else will stay there, if Helena Iara can reach it, and the bookshelves and CDs are in constant danger.

Last night, I piled up a mountain of pillows and then put her lion on top.  Not only did she pull the lion down, but then took each pillow and threw it to the ground.  Perhaps it was the lion that inspired this memory, but this time, instead of thinking about entropy and chaos, as I had before, a couple of quotes from the Hebrew prophets came into my head:

“I will go before you and level the exalted places, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron." [Is 45:2]

"Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain." [Is 40: 4]

I never really liked these verses when I was a kid; I love mountains too much to celebrate their demise, even when I understood that it was a metaphor for social justice, for bringing down the rich and powerful and raising up the poor.

It's interesting, I think, to consider the way that the writers of the Christian gospels used these lines as a proof of their ideas about Jesus being the anointed savior of the Hebrew people.  Matthew cites Isaiah in his narrative of the birth of Jesus... is it merely a coincidence that these actions aren't merely a metaphor for social justice and equality, but also a concrete description of what babies do?  They "level the exalted places" and break anything they can find... maybe not "break in pieces doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron," but that's more for lack of strength than lack of desire!  (St. Augustine once said that "If babies are innocent, it is merely because they lack the strength to do wrong, not because they lack the will."  I prefer, "If babies cannot level the mountains, it is because they lack the strength, not because they lack the desire.")

In any case, might it be that Matthew is suggesting that a baby's instincts are for justice?  That this seeming negation and destruction really stands for revolution, for throwing off the yoke of Babylon or Rome?  Perhaps.  At least those ideas make it a little easier to clean up after Helena...

[The photos, by the way, come from our vacation.  Most parents will recognize chocolate on a baby's face; mine is filthy after a 40 mile bike ride up and down the mountains in the rain and mud.]