Posted by As we grow we lose innocence, or at least lose touch with it. We begin to become more aware of ourselves, our actions, the impact we have on others and the world. We begin to fear. We begin to compromise. We make decisions, mostly unconscious, about how we can best be loved; about how we can best fit in. The child in us, those experiences and memories of earliest being, can be lost. Childhood becomes covered and exiled, deemed no longer relevant to a life that must now grow into responsibility.
What is responsibility? Part of it is the re-learning, the re-discovery of our own innocence and openness to the gift that is life. New parents and new grand-parents can tell us something about this re-discovery. And in the playfulness of lovers we often see children emerging from deep sleep.
The seeds of innocence can sprout again in the vulnerability at the heart of our most intimate relationships.
Divine Love is in all of this, calling us home to a full experience of a human life. When we are aware and quiet enough we can see that this Love makes an Icon of Creation. Creation, all of it, is soaking in what our hearts desire the most. Becoming as little children is seeing this, experiencing this, again and again.
IX
I remember as a child being scared of imagining what I wanted.
If I imagined, would it happen,
Or would the world of imagination reach into the world of stuff
and steal what I wanted the most?
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I feel a child’s desire to be at the river again,
Before I begin to think too much,
Before distraction lures attention away,
And again I lose conscious sight of Love.
.
I listen and walk back to the valley.
I climb through The Eye,
Down the steep gully,
To the bank below.
.
In the presence of the river wonderings settle.
There is calm here.
It’s flow helps me come back to the flow within.
Soon I find myself, again, in the presence of Love.
.
Grey clouds begin to fill the sky.
The day darkens.
Thunder echoes in the valley.
Blue and grey become one.
.
Soon rain falls on the river.
As water hits water light explodes on dark green surface.
The face of the river looks like the night sky, flashing and twinkling.
I am in awe.
.
I lay back and surrender to the flashing and twinkling of Love.
The river has become my Icon.
