The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor

by Amy Hollingsworth

What is offered in faith by one person can be translated by the Holy Spirit into what the other person needs to hear and see. The space between them is holy ground, and the Holy Spirit uses that space in ways that not only translate, but transcend.

Fred’s intention was never to impose his beliefs on his viewers. Instead, he wanted to create an atmosphere, one that would allow viewers to feel safe and accepted. And that’s what Lauren felt. Once the viewers experienced that unconditional acceptance, Fred reasoned, they could grow from there. And that’s what Lauren did. Fred sometimes referred to his program as “tending soil.” His role was to provide the soil, and he relied on the Holy Spirit to turn it into holy ground.

Fred rightly reasoned that if we accept ourselves we are better equipped to accept our neighbor. So accepting ourselves is always the starting point to something greater—a deeper maturity, a deeper walk with the Lord, and ultimately, a greater acceptance and understanding of our neighbor. This is the first of the toast sticks for the eyes: How we see ourselves affects how we see others.

Even recoverable loss takes something away; it leaves you changed, less protected.

Reflecting on my own cistern experience, I realized that God’s intention was not to drown me, not to overwhelm me with illness, but only to hold me still for a while.

Frankly, I think that after we die, we have this wide understanding of what’s real. And we’ll probably say, “Ah, so that’s what it was all about.”

Fred once told me a story that I know he liked to repeat often. “I heard this true story of this child, a little four-year-old boy whose mother and dad had just brought home a baby sister,” he said. “Sound familiar to you?” Then he laughed. I had almost the identical scenario at home when Fred and I first met. “He pleaded with his mother and dad to have some private time with this baby; in fact, insisted. Well, the mother and dad were concerned; they thought maybe he was planning to hurt that baby. Finally he won. And he walked into the baby’s room, and the mother and dad thought, ‘We will just stay at the door to be sure that the baby is safe.’ The little boy simply walked up to the crib, looked at the baby, and said, ‘Tell me what it was like, I’m beginning to forget.’ Out of the mouths of babes, you know. So heaven doesn’t have any boundaries.”

“If you had one final broadcast,” I asked, “one final opportunity to address your television neighbors, and you could tell them the single most important lesson of your life, what would you say?” He paused a moment and then said, ever so slowly: Well, I would want [those] who were listening somehow to know that they had unique value, that there isn’t anybody in the whole world exactly like them and that there never has been and there never will be. And that they are loved by the Person who created them, in a unique way. If they could know that and really know it and have that behind their eyes, they could look with those eyes on their neighbor and realize, “My neighbor has unique value too; there’s never been anybody in the whole world like my neighbor, and there never will be.” If they could value that person—if they could love that person—in ways that we know that the Eternal loves us, then I would be very grateful.