Speak to us of Children

Children are often in the news, never far away from and often subject to the crises that adults create. One of my favourite books is "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran. (If you have never read it... you must!) So I turned this morning to the word of the prophet in Gibran's book when another frightening and terrible event unfurled, this time in Kenya. Here are those words:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children".
And he said:
Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So he loves also the bow that is stable.

I sometimes wish there were more stable bows in the world...