Modern man has miraculous powers. He flies to the moon and soars beyond the sun. He creates wonder after wonder. His inventive capacity seems limitless. Yet if tomorrow any man designed and built a computer infinitely more powerful and complex than any that now exists he would instantly be awarded a Nobel Prize for Science.
Or if any man constructed a pump that could run without stopping, beating 80 times a minute, without a hitch, for 80 years and more he would be honoured as the greatest engineer, the greatest inventor, the world has seen.
Yet any time a child is born – in shining home or meanest slum – just such marvels are created. Indeed, infinitely more than that. For it is not only the brain and heart of a new-born child that are miraculous and well beyond the wit of man’s invention. Every intricate part that makes up the child is incomparably beautiful, crafted to a stunning perfection. And beyond the miracle of the parts is the much greater miracle of the whole that is greater than the parts – what some call mind and others personality and others soul or spirit.
To be involved with a birth is to be involved with a thousand miracles. Whatever one achieves in life pales into insignificance beside the creation of a child. Mothers know this best, it is their unshakable secret. But a man can feel it too when a child of his is born and suddenly, for a blinding moment, he claims an insight into one of the very few achievements that really matter in life.
He is also bound to feel a small but triumphant satisfaction that here is proof that he has found a way to outlive his own mortality. Thomas Hardy put it exactly in his poem ‘Heredity’:
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace,
Through time to time anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.
The years – heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance – that is I;
The eternal thing in man
That heeds no call to die.
The other day I was looking through old diaries and came across an account of the birth of my youngest son, now 20, and it brought back such vivid memories. Near Christmas he was born in the midst of blackouts, floods, shortages, and a steadily increasing breakdown in public services throughout the country. Yet he was fortunate. The care he and his mother received at the Mercy Hospital, ancient then and broken down but a home of compassion and standards, more than compensated for the floodwater and the darkened windows and the city brought almost to a standstill. The nurses there had diplomas not only in nursing care but in the vital arts of understanding pain and anxiety. The warm concern and careful professionalism cultivated throughout that institution could give lessons in what hospital care is truly all about to more than one gleaming palace of the latest medical equipment that I have had the misfortune to know in rich countries.
When children are born, parents harbour great ambitious, we hope they will achieve success and happiness. But there is more than that we should desire.
Much that I wanted to say to him, as I looked at him in wonder in the first few weeks of life, was contained in a poem which the great cellist Pablo Casals jotted down long ago for the children he loved beyond even his great art:
When will we teach our children what they are?
One should say to each of them:
Do you know what you are? You are a marvel!
You are unique! In all the world there is no
other child exactly like you! In the millions
of years that have passed, there has never been
another child like you!
And look at your body, what a wonder it is!
Your legs, your arms, your curving fingers, the
way you move! You may become a Shakespeare, a
Michelangelo, a Beethoven, You have the capacity
for anything.
Yes, you are a marvel, and when you grow up,
can you harm another who is, like you, a marvel?
No, hurt no one, bring only the joy you can!
“No, hurt no one, bring only the joy you can!” I wrote that in my diary for him, still the best refrain I know.
