Wednesday, June 2, 2010

PTTC Part 14: Their Mysterious Origin

"Did your children really begin
with the union of your bodies?
Or is their origin more mysterious?

Eternal
means no time,
no beginning,
no end.
Do your children,
who visit you in time,
really reside in eternity?

If you try to grasp them,
they slip away.
They are more than what you see and hear and feel.
They belong somewhere else
and only visit here.
So why do you worry?"

This is a very poetic verse to me. Personally, I believe that there is no beginning or end to life, that it is a continuum of lives, all lived differently. For now, my son has been given to me to care for, but I always have to remember that he doesn't exist in this time and place alone, he is an eternal being just passing through. If you are a Christian, you probably believe that "we are not of this world." I believe that we are, definitely, part of this world, but that we are also part of something larger, something that we are constantly trying to understand through our interactions here.

Children will not appreciate your trying to hold them here, static, in this moment in time. Children are even more fluid than adults, and their life is one constant transition. Parents need to be even more flexible because their children need your relationship with them to change over time. They can't be treated like an adult when they are just a child, they can't be treated like a child when they are just a baby, they can't be treated like a baby when they are a child, and they can't be treated like a child when they are an adult. A parent who tries to stop time is doing their child a disservice, because they refuse to acknowledge that time, and their child, need fluidity to thrive.

4 comments:

  1. I think this comes at an ironic time- considering you and I were discussing how it seems so much like there are already tiny spirits in my womb who are only waiting to take on a body.
    With every day that passes, I become more convinced that souls can interact and connect beyond physical limitations...

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  2. oh definitely. i agree with you on that. :) personally i believe that souls never die, they just change form, like matter does.

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  3. That's also why I value dreams so much. So many times I've wondered if people's souls have somehow touched mine in my sleep... I can't come up with any other explanation for some of the things I've experienced in my dreams...

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  4. Oh. And the last part of the verse reminds me of something the Bunkes said right after Justin died: "Lord, thank you for letting us care for your child for you these past 20 years..." Children don't actually belong to us, we are only theirs for a time...

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