When all around you becomes cynical and bitter with age.
Or the many hardships that life has to offer.
Just when you think that their is no goodness left.

STOP!

Reach to the children.
For they are innocence.
They are free from hate.
They are honest in all that they are.
In love, they are without judgment.
Their anger, short lived and to the point.
Their eyes and minds open.
Their curiosity never ends.
They are open books with empty pages,
Waiting to be filled with imaginative images.

Beware the literal world of the child.
All that they see is their truth.
All that we say and do is written on the empty pages of their book.
As they travel through life and reread the pages.
What will they find as reference to life?
Will love and trust be theirs to copy?
Will joy and adventure be what they seek?
Or will they cower in the dark fearing the shadows?
Will they sing or will they cry?
Will they have the strength to endure the hardships that life has to offer?
Or will they be sniveling weak leaches,
Sucking the life out of everything around them.

The children are what we teach.
Their book of life is written by us.
Beware the guidance that you leave on those pages.
Give them joy.
Give them courage.
Give them love.

When you think there is no goodness left.
Remember the inocence of the child.
We have made the world what it is.
We have written the rules of life on the empty pages of their book.
How shall we leave them how shall we fix it.
This is not a broken toy.
How do we erase those pages.
How do we explain.
When will we stop blaming the blameless.
When will we have the courage to change the world.
Give us the courage.
To find the joy.
And give them love.

Thunder
Mar. 16/98