An Elevator to God

The gifts of smallness and Thérèse of Lisieux's "Little Way"

The red brick church in Canaan, NY—now a modern, multipurpose building, no longer brick—sat on the corner of County Route 5 and Route 295. It’s easy to drive by and miss it, that is, if you’re driving by in the first place. Located in a sparse and rural county in New York state, the only place to pick up a mediocre coffee and protein bar is at the oversized truck stop a mile down the road. It’s with the lovely community that gathers at the “Canaan Congregational Church” that I pursued my first church “call” or ministry position.

I entered ordained ministry after several years of working in Boston-based social justice non-profits. Skeptical of small-town living, I harbored a city bias. Call me crazy, but I relished the sounds of ornery traffic honking, the rise of big buildings, and the ease with which I became anonymous at the Boston Public Library. When casting about for first-time minister positions, like Nathaniel in John’s gospel glancing a skeptical eye towards Jesus’ town of Nazareth, I thought “What good can come from Canaan?”

Discussing moving options from Boston, my three criteria were that I would be able to find an art cinema, purchase a well-steamed latte, and sip hoppy beer at a local brewery. It turns out the area where I settled—the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts—has all of those things. Plus, becoming a solo pastor at a small church like Canaan meant that I didn’t have to climb the church ranks in a large church before I preached every week and sat at bedsides of the dying. I wanted to jump into the experience, not wade. I immediately grew fond of the kind, no-frills nature of the people at the Canaan church—and so, to Canaan I went (by way of Great Barrington, a town thirty minutes away where I could still sip lattes. I know that might sound snobby. It is what it is.)

Canaan Congregational Church was/is a very small church. At church conferences, pastors sometimes play these ego games where they size each other up based on the attendance numbers of the church someone is leading. “Oh, I’m the pastor of such and such. We have about a thousand members.” Nothing makes me roll my eyes and head back to the brewpub with a book than clergy trying to one-up each other. Whenever someone asked about what attendance was like at the Canaan Congregational Church, I gave them a big smile and proudly said, “We have about twenty hearty people on a good day!”

I loved pastoring a small church. Not only were the church members almost completely lacking in the pretense that sometimes comes from wealthier or larger congregations, but the fact that they were so small meant that they were far more willing than most to take creative risks. They knew acutely that the future was not guaranteed for them—that the money might run out, that the building might become too much of a burden—and instead of shutting down in fear of the future, they faced the present with bold willingness. We could try almost anything together in worship—and we did! We opened the sanctuary to showcase the work of local artists, held exhibitions, and incorporated contemplative “art appreciation” moments into Sunday services. We gathered at a pub once a month to discuss a theological or ethical issue with people—often to a packed crowd that would never set foot through the church doors. We had jazz concerts, meditative services, and Sundays where we just read poetry to each other. They welcomed me charting all kinds of theological-biblical explorations in sermons.

I ended last week’s entry by mentioning that a holy, ordinary spirituality is not big—it’s small. I heard from several church pastors about how that was helpful framing in our “growth means godliness” culture. I enjoy attending certain large churches and feeling the buzz of excitement that such Sunday event-production brings. But the truth is that my time in ministry was small, and most of my days are filled with little, ordinary moments (and isn’t that true of everyone?). That’s why I’ve begun falling in love with the French mystic Thérèse of Lisieux. She developed a spirituality around smallness that she called “the little way,” and I’ll be dedicating some of the next weeks to exploring her life and insights.

Thérèse of Lisieux entered a convent in Lisieux, France, at the age of 15 and died 9 years later at 24. Along the way, she wrote a book that has become a spiritual classic—The Story of a Soul—in which she frankly shares joys, struggles, and prayers about her “little way” of knowing God. In one memorable passage, she envisions littleness as the elevator that takes us directly to God. She feels a great chasm between saints whom she perceives as existing on heavenly summits close to God. But she discovers in the Scriptures a special access granted for the “little ones”: “Whoever is a little one, let him/her come to me” (Proverbs 9:4). The little way is for Thérèse a speedy shortcut to Divine Presence, an elevator that raises her to Jesus’ arms.

Photo by Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash

It's worth saying that the view of the cosmos that looks to God up there from down here doesn’t work. Diana Butler Bass calls that “elevator Christianity”: if you believe the right things, you ascend to the golden penthouse; if you don’t, you descend and become stuck in the fiery, eternal parking garage. Many Christians today still have a cosmology that dates to over twenty-five hundred years ago! The historian Peter Brown helpfully called this an “upper worldly” rather than “other-worldly” view. But in a quantum, evolutionary universe, heaven can no longer be “up there.” Wherever we meet God has to be right here and over there, too.

And still Thérèse’s insight stands: littleness is the way to God. “I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more,” she wrote. Whatever metaphor we use—elevator, moving airport walkway, teleportation or Harry Potter portkey—the humility, readiness, and softened heart that keeps us “little” takes us right to the heart of God. Small churches have much to teach us, as does the smallness of our lives and the moments we are face to face with our weakness, need, and desperation. And perhaps only when we reckon with our smallness will God beckon us to “bigger things”—but by that time small will be big and down will be up. As Jesus put it, “Let the little children come to me” (Matthew 19:14).

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