The Innocence of Children

Lying half-buried in the mud and the muck is a crystal of a pure and simple truth. We wearisome adults don’t notice it. Or choose not to see it. Or decline to pick it up. We put on our heavy boots of dogma and crush it underfoot. We put on our tap shoes and dance all around it. We tiptoe by so as not to wake it up because we don’t want trouble. We put on our slippers of comfort and put our feet up on the T.V. table. We put on our expensive polished dress shoes and decline to step to the side to get them dirty. We put on our running shoes made in China and work more on our heart rate than our heart opening. So many ways to not see it.

It takes an innocent child to notice it, pick it up and hold it up to the light. The other day, my five-year old granddaughter Zadie accompanied her parents to her first political protest. She was mightily impressed by the swirl of movement, the energy in the air, the signs speaking to the new President elected by folks wearing all those shoes. She watched, she listened, she got very quiet, turning over something in her mind. At the end of the march, she turned to her parents and said:

“Now will he be nice?”