Brother & Sister Love

Fairy Stool

"I remember I used to half believe

and wholly play

with fairies

when I was a child.

What heaven can be more real

than to retain the spirit-world of childhood,

tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense."
Beatrix Potter

Downhill Can Be Fun Too

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?

(an excerpt from "all ignorance tobbaggans into know" by ee cummings)

The saying is "Ignorance is bliss,"

but that sort of bliss is short lived.

A fool smiles but knows nothing,

a sweet child covered in snow and sweat.

I'd rather trudge uphill to the sun and be burnt in that light

than face another childhood of thrill seeking.

Tiny Seedling Bursting Through Barriers

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Robert Frost (excerpted)

How tough it is to be born, burst fresh out of nowhere and grow up in an adult's world where ruts and furrows, not round baby cheeks, are the norm.

Protect Them

Receive the children in reverence,

educate them in love,

and send them forth in freedom.

Rudolph Steiner

A body raised on junk food and starved of nutrition cannot develop normally, no less a young and impressionable mind.  As Halloween approaches, I see by the choice of costumes what horrible images our children are being exposed to through television and films.  Who are their role models?  What values are they learning?

How My Five Year Old Taught Me The Art of Living

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Pablo Picasso

Years ago I watched, fascinated, as my five-year-old painted a scene of dinosaurs attacking one another.  He talked through the whole process as the drama unfolded.  At one point I wanted him to stop.  The images were pretty good and his composition of the piece was well  laid out - but no, the fight continued as more dinosaurs entered the scene and there was bloodshed everywhere.  Before I knew it, the entire canvas was covered in paint from top to bottom and I sighed, "He ruined it."  But he was very satisfied with himself.  It was a great moment of triumph for him.  To this day, I wish I had that attitude - why do I cling to things that don't last when the real joy - what we get to keep - is in the moment-to-moment unfolding?

The Virtue of Patience

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.  (Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Pooh's Little Instruction Book by A.A. Milne)

What is patience?  Is it a child who doesn't have temper tantrums, who does all the things grown ups say, whose spirit is utterly squashed as she waits to be noticed and listened to with love and empathy?  There is nothing admirable about temper tantrums - how childish - but patience, the virtuous kind, must be born out of self-sacrifice.  The patience that A.A. Milne speaks of comes from the wisdom and compassion that is learned when we start to see life from the other person's point of view.  That's being childlike, not childish.