a story for children

Long ago there was a fantastic adventure. It was a little bit hidden and a little bit shy but it was there nonetheless. It was like a seed, which seems like nothing sometimes when you look at it, a little thing with no visible parts, nothing to indicate by its unassuming size. And yet. And yet...

In the same way, under the right conditions, regardless of circumstances, the fantastic adventure with sprout from you. It will burst forth or it will gently unfold its first tendril. It will race toward fulfillment of its own sunshiney potential, our it will creep, in fits and starts, slowly forward in the dark.

This fantastic adventure is the seedling of your soul, no one has one like it, but everyone has one. You came here to sprout, to grow your own shape and color and to share it as freely as that tree or that flower or that tomato vine. Nothing can stop it. You can think it's impossible, but that's only a delay. Once you taste the feeling of it, then the fantastic adventure is unstoppable.

Do you want to try now? To start somewhere, which is anywhere, which is right here? Do you want to put your bare feet onto the ground in the grass or in the sand or in the mud? Go ahead! Can you feel little sprouts growing? They feel like tickles and giggles and bird feathers and rain. It begins here, noticing this. And each time you sprout a new leaf, branch, or root, you will know that it's true by the bubbles of joy that pop and fizz in your heart, in your chest. 

And you can share these fizzy pops of love with your mom and your dad and your family and your friends, with people you meet in the park out the store, with your pets and the birds and the animals, with the forest and the city and the ocean and the shore. You can share them when it's quiet out when it's very loud, even when you are crying or when you don't want to make a sound. 

Most of all you can share with yourself everything that comes up from inside as you grow, there's space for it all even if you feel slow.

And if ever the wind in your branches makes you feel scared, you can call to the magic of each little seed that grows without worry, fearless and free.

Every small seedling in the forest or garden gets rained on and windblown and sometimes downtrodden.

Still each little seedling looks to the sun and pushes its roots deeper into the earth that it came from. Just like the sun feels nice on your skin and the cool mud between your toes tickles, so the sprout that you are on this fantastic adventure grows right from your heart, can you feel it? Follow that, follow that, oh, where will we go next?

June 13, 2013