The Beginners Mind
Maintaining a child-like consciousness amidst the chaos
It’s 605 BC.
The Babylonian empire is crouching at Israel’s door, ready to invade, extract, and traffic the people of Israel away from their beloved homeland and somehow, only Jeremiah sees it.
The Hebrew word dābār, “to speak”, comes to Jeremiah, drawing him into embodying a new voice and vocation as prophet for the people. In the book bearing his name, dābār appears more than 220 times and the phrase “the word of the Lord (Living Presence)” about 50 times. That kind of repetition is more than a subtle hint to perk up and lean in closer. Jeremiah is trying his best to tell the reader something about the shaping, sending, healing power of the Living Word.
And I can’t help but ask: what exactly is that? What is this Living Word? Seems like we sure could use more of it in our moment of history. Now seems like a ripe time. And within the ancient text and this particular context, why is it that just one person hears it? Why couldn’t the whole community or at least a few more pick up on that vital word Jeremiah was hearing?
Skipping way forward… Jesus offers a clue regarding how one hears this word, in Matthew’s gospel: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” (18:3)
The Buddhists call this child-like consciousness the beginner’s mind—the type of curiosity and openness that leads to enlightenment.
What’s a child’s mind like? Quick to wander and wonder and so full of awe, an imagination so beautifully generative. When my teenage sons were toddlers, I remember stuff like bugs, clouds, and cats would capture their full undivided attention.
Then we get older and life punches us in the mouth. Then it does it again. And then again. We become cynical, exhausted, and numb… adulting does a number on us.
I turn 48 next weekend and that number and my body doesn’t exactly feel like a child’s anymore, yet I keep wondering, how do I practice and keep practicing letting go of the calculating and the cynical? How do I keep falling into that imaginative awe of the beginner’s mind, the child consciousness, so I can remain present for the right voices?
In Jeremiah 1:6, the prophet thinks his youth disqualifies him from speaking for God—when it’s actually the very soil God desires.
Look at how this thread of “youth” (na‘ar) shows up in scripture:
1 Kings 3:7 – Solomon, overwhelmed, says he is only a na‘ar who doesn’t know how to lead people in or out.
What did he mean by leading people in or out?
Numbers 27:16–17 – Moses appoints Joshua, a shepherd, to guide people in and out. A leader in God’s vision is less about age or status and more about the heart’s vision of a shepherd.
2 Kings 5 – A trafficked servant girl (na‘arāh) (even the current reader will instinctively overlook her) from Israel speaks a word which leads to Naaman, a mighty military commander’s healing. Due to that unsuspecting word from an overlooked child, the decorated leader is transformed, no longer calling himself great, but now referring to himself as a servant.
Jumping ahead again to Jesus, this is the exact consciousness he communicates with Nicodemus when he said, “You must be born again.” (John 3:3)
And with the disciples when he told them, “Let the children come to me, for the kingdom belongs to such as these.” (Matt. 19:14)
Hearing the word begins with consciousness, the consciousness of a child, the beginner’s mind.
A blank canvas of wonder.
The joy, the laughter, and the playfulness. It’s a path adults seems to become too adult for.
And all of this unfolding now, as in this current moment, not in peace, but in our disorder and historical chaos — with an imperial regime crouching at the door, with a looming doom, and a naïve people so caught up in the noise they don’t recognize they’re about to be consciously exiled and in some cases literally deported or imprisoned.
Prophets, like Jeremiah, often sound like nails on a chalkboard - bitter, cynical, even violent at first. But if you can hang with them and follow their arc to the end, they bend toward divine tenderness, ultimate reconciliation, and a collective healing. Throughout the text as well as in our moment, The Living Presence honors not the religious mind, the moral mind, or the academic mind, but the beginner’s mind and she honors it all the way through—allowing those wobbly, childlike sound waves to carry the liberating Word forward into the future into the consciousness of those who are ready for it.
Here we are. There’s the reality of what’s going down in our country (not good). And then there’s the media’s version (exponential doom, chaos, hopelessness).
Our task in all this chaos? What does it mean to receive and embody a Word that restores—even as an empire crumbles? To cultivate the awe, innocence, and wisdom of the beginners mind.
A Blessing for your week
And now, as children of the Living Word,
May your ears remain open, even as the world grows louder.
May your eyes perceive deep wisdom, even as others panic.
May your heart grow softer, even as the days grow harder.
May you be led not by fear, but by the Living Presence—
the Word that breathes, brings forth, and creates.
And may what is being born in you now
become a sacred gift for the world.
Amen.
My young grandchildren have been such great teachers in this regard, they are so aware and present with a joyful spirit