A Little Girl Shapes the Planet
I was sitting on the front porch with a couple of friends the other day. We were basking in the glow of a spectacular early evening, enjoying our beverages about forty-five minutes before sunset. It was bliss. It was, that is, until Tom shattered the moment. “Ya know,” he said, “I wonder if my grandkids will enjoy evenings like this.”
Tom can be a real buzz kill. I knew what he meant, but I felt obliged to ask, “What’s on your mind, Tom?”
As usual, he replied with a question. “What have we done to deserve this when we are making life so difficult for our children? We’re killing the Planet.” Tom could be both gruff and sensitive.
Our talks often, but not always, get around to such issues. As Albert Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” That may be, but I don’t always know how to change my thinking to solve a problem, and I certainly can’t solve Tom’s. But sometimes a solution shows up without thinking. This seems to be what happened next.
Meanwhile, Across the Street...
Across the street, a young mother was walking with her even younger daughter – a girl of maybe 3 or 4 year old. The little girl was absolutely enthralled with the day; her little body was skipping along the sidewalk as she held her mother’s hand. She was so in love with everything! And I could sense that everything was in love with her. And in that moment I saw that even at a young age, all children have the “responsibility” to enjoy themselves, and share their love and joy with creation. Love is how they give back. Nothing more is asked of them. In other words, the expressed joy of kids is a powerful way to keep the world alive.
A child’s role is receiving; through that receiving, love is given. An adult’s role is giving, and through giving there is receiving. In traditional cultures, a “rite of passage” for a young adult signifies it’s time to start giving back to the community and planet by assuming more responsibilities. The little girl walking so happily with her mother and planet shows that receiving all that love from everything around her – I could really see a glow around her as the trees and everything else responded to her bliss by loving her back – was likely equal to the greatest giving back possible! Her palpable glow refreshed wherever she walked. She was just as much in ceremony as any high priest, pope or shaman, probably even more. For her, it was child’s play.
For me, it was magic.
To live the magic, we have to drop our shields. Shields are things we do to keep the magic and mystery of the world from intruding on our every day life. A non-magical life can create internal personal conflict when we feel there has to be something more to life, but won’t allow ourselves to find it.
I believe that befriending both magic and sacred space – which, for the little girl was the sidewalk – is part of the answer to Tom’s question. I said as much to him. We befriend sacred space the same way we create and maintain any other positive relationship: with love, attention, intention, awareness, giving and receiving, and doing things for others out of love rather than obligation, manipulation, self-gratification or self-aggrandizement. In other words, by being real; by being authentic. It’s likely that as we work to improve ourselves – and we all are – our other relationships improve. And, if we are to believe ancient texts as well as quantum physics, this good energy never goes away. Nor does any other.
So, the way to keep from squeezing the life out of our planet is to give back. Using commonplace ceremonial space the way that little girl did can help. It can impact what we project and with what we resonate, which means it impacts what we attract and how we live.
It might be child’s play, but if more elders did it, we just might give our children a better chance at a better life.
© Steve Guettermann 2023
