About Children

A woman held her babe against her bosom and said:
‘Speak to us of children’,
And the Prophet replied: ‘Your children are not your children;
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing to experience itself.
Your children come through you, but they are
Neither of you nor from you;
And although for a time, they are with you,
They do not belong to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
For they have to think their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies, but not their souls,
Because they dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
But you will visit it again, when you return to Earth
As a child in future lifetimes.

You may strive to be like them;
Be young and see your world through the eyes of a child again,
But do not seek to make them like you,
For life neither goes backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which life sends forth Its children
As living arrows.

The Divine Archer alone can see their mark and yours
Upon the path of the Infinite.
With His might he bends each one of you into shape,
So that all His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be with gladness;
For as much as He loves the arrow that flies,
He loves the bow that is stable.

He particularly loves parents, who give their children roots to grown in
And the freedom to fly when their time has come to do so;
Who as their children grow up, slowly step back and set them free,
Encouraging them to learn from their own experiences,
And to dream their own dreams;
Who do all they can to help their children
To fulfil their own highest potential, not their parents’.

The Archer loves wise parents and teachers,
Who tell the children in their care that they are the children of God
And that therefore one is as precious and unique as the other;
Who respect them because they know that even when a child is still living
In a smaller body than their own, it has nonetheless
Come into our world as a fully developed soul and spirit in its own right,
Who may have a long history of evolution behind it
That could have taken more lifetimes than those of its parents.

Wise parents tell their offspring that they are certainly not some kind
Of appendix of theirs and that they have come into this life
To learn, evolve and grow some more through their own experiences,
The same as they are doing and will always continue to do.
When their children go to school, they point out to them that they are
Learning for themselves and for life itself,
Not only for this lifetime, but for Eternity.
They explain to them the laws of the Universe and that because of this,
Whatever anyone sends out to life has to return to them.
And they teach by their good example that it is necessary
To have some input into this life, before one can expect
To get anything of value from it.

From ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran 1883-1931
Lebanese/American poet
Edited by Aquarius

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