Listening to Phil Coulter songs last week. I discovered ‘Scorn Not His Simplicity’, that Coulter wrote in 1969, shortly after the birth of his first son, who had Down syndrome.
See the child with the golden hair
Yet eyes that show the emptiness inside
Do we know, can we understand just how he feels
Or have we really tried?
See him now, as he stands alone
And watches children play a children’s game
Simple child, he looks almost like the others
Yet they know he’s not the same.
Scorn not his simplicity
But rather try to love him all the more
Scorn not his simplicity
Oh no, Oh no
Phil Coulter is coming to terms with life. They’d been looking forward to their child’s birth, and things don’t turn out as they expected. He’s imagining what the future is going to be like for his son; he’s different and won’t fit in with other children. He’s coping his wife’s feelings of guilt, his own feelings of helplessness. He’s trying to work out how they as parents are going to cope in the future.
See him stare, not recognizing the kind face
That only yesterday he loved
The loving face, of a mother who can’t understand
What she’s been guilty of.
How she cried, tears of happiness
The day the doctor told her it’s a boy
Now she cries tears of helplessness
And thinks of all the things he can’t enjoy
Scorn not his simplicity
But rather try to love him all the more
Scorn not his simplicity
Oh no, Oh no
I think of friends who have children with a range of disabilities. I reflect on my own response to folks with Down Syndrome, and more generally to folks with physical and mental disability… to youngsters who passed through our ‘special needs’ classes at school… times I’ve visited ‘Ashley’ and ‘Warren’, our local schools for children who cannot manage mainstream education.
Coulter sets me two requests that come as challenges. Don’t scorn, dismiss, disregard their simplicity – all that makes them different. Love them all the more.
Only he knows how to face the future hopefully
Surrounded by despair
He won’t ask for your pity or your sympathy
But surely you should care
Scorn not his simplicity
But rather try to love him all the more
Scorn not his simplicity
Oh no, Oh no.
I respond in the context of my faith… Jesus received, accepted, welcomed all… the ‘mad man’ in the graveyard, the woman ‘caught in adultery’, the dishonest tax collector. On one occasion Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ Scorn not their simplicity.
In the story of the ‘Good Samaritan’, where the disabled man is helped by an unlikely stranger. He’s intentionally helped, treated with dignity and respect… Jesus concludes, ‘Go and do likewise.’ Love him all the more.
malcolmsmusings.org 