Dear Reader:

Madeleine L’Engle once said:

“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”

As children, don’t we all remember wanting to be all grown-up? We wearied of being a child and wanted the independence and freedom we thought we saw in our parents and other adult lives around us. Until one day, it dawned on us we were now grown-ups and we felt even more restrained and restricted some days as “mature” adults. Images of childhood suddenly appeared carefree and uninhibited…we wanted to return to those “good old days.”

Excerpt from Walking on Water: Madeleine L’Engle:

” If we try to follow in Jesus’ way, what the children see us in does matter. Jesus told his friends and disciples over and over again that not only were they to let the little children come to him but that they were to be like little children themselves.”

‘I need not belabor the point that to retain our childlike openness does not mean to be childish. Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves… at any chronological age we are at we must also be able to be four or twelve or twenty-three, thirty-one, forty-five and…and …and…”

“For growing up never ends, we never get there. I am still in the process of growing up, but I will make no progress if I lose any of myself along the way. “

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I saw an article written the other day by one of the famous atomic physicists responsible for the production of nuclear weapons (Dr. Friedrich Dessaurer,) A man of science he wrote:

“Man is a creature who depends entirely on revelation. In all his intellectual endeavor he should not strive to superimpose the structure of his own mind, his systems of thought upon reality… because at the beginning of all spiritual endeavor stands humility, and he who loses it can achieve no other heights than the height of disillusionment. “

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In reflection upon my own continued “growing up” stage in life, I do look for new revelations each and every day….a new thought might surprise me while watering the garden or hearing a catch-phrase on television or reading a book and it takes my train of thought off into a new Never-Land of possibilities.

There has to be a certain amount of trust embedded in us spiritually to open ourselves to the invisible world around us like a small child can do. Jesus told us call the Creator of us all ABBA. Not only Father or Sir or Lord, but Abba-Daddy- the small child’s name for Father. Not Dad, the way Daddy becomes Dad when children reach adolescence, but Daddy, the name of trust.

The precious peeks we receive occasionally into another world that will one day beckon us home can exist only within the realm of trust as a small child trusts his Daddy….our ABBA.

So until tomorrow….Father, thank you for those precious peeks of eternity you give us as a gift of grace. They give us hope to continue growing towards You as a child of God.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Big Red has gotten so big I couldn’t get all of it in either a verical or lateral photo shot. As soon as all the buds pop open Big Red is going to need to have a lot of its branches trimmed….It is getting almost too big for bench. How far you have come, my friend, since late winter when I worried about your future. You knew you were fine all along, just resting for the spring and summer.