The Poetry of Children

I was aware today of how lucky I am that the way I make my living allows me to enter and observe the inner worlds of children. Some days I'm just doing the job, and that is both exhausting and satisfying. Then there are days when, for example, I really know, in that transcendent way of knowing, that the sandbox is a sacred place, where pain is purged, fears disappear, buried treasures are discovered.

Today a little girl who has been abused drew three tear drops on a paper and wrote inside them the names of the three babies in the playroom she was tending.

Another child told me that her baby brother won't share their mom with her. She asked me to hold her so she could be a baby, too.

One boy whose mother just found out he'd been abused and was acting to protect him, played with the lion family. The mother lion was shielding her baby from a menacing dragon.

Some days I remember that I work in a temple, a witness to the ablutions, the pain, the poetry of children. And I am grateful.