In the middle of a spring day a four-year old was shaking a tiny tree as hard as he could.
"What are you doing?" his mother asked.
"I'm stirring the sky," he exulted.
Small children are poets & geniuses. I have longed campaigned for us to listen to them, especially if we are trying create. They see & say things that almost no adult could think up.
How do we dismiss them? More than fifty years ago I was leaving a grocery store when a three-year old beside me gazed into the spring sky & shouted, "Look, mom. A fairy!"
"Oh, nonsense!" her mother scolded. "That's just a dandelion puff."
All these years later I wonder if that sweet little girl was able to translate her childhood belief into an appreciation of adult magic.
After leaving Santa Claus behind enlightened adults realize their own miraculous powers. Look at the effect you have when you thank a caregiver, smile at a policemen or tell a doctor you are grateful for her work.
The practice of Radical Loving Care is the practice of magic. Consider your impact when you meet a patient's eyes with love in yours.
-Erie Chapman
Photo: Reed, age two, my son's youngest child
