MY PEOPLE

These are my people. They turn out to be master-teachers, as I discovered when I visited them recently where they live in Minnesota. They are Varrah Claire, Savina Elise, Avari Isabella, Kaleesi May, and David Keegan. They teach not in words so much as by experience. Probably you who are mothers and fathers already know this, but I--not having lived the day-to-day with children of my own--could speak words derived from experience, but seldom did I experience purely, wordlessly.

What makes these children such powerful teachers is that nothing stands between them and the experience of being. Varrah awakened me to my own distances. Looking into her eyes and listening to her talk to me I was suddenly aware that I didn't need to protect myself from anything at all. She wouldn't, couldn't hurt me; she had no thought of it at all. Surprise filled me--I didn't know I'd set a barrier between myself and probably everything and everyone. And the barrier is thought itself. I'm a writer. It's how my mind works -- giving experience form in words. But Varrah and I, we don't need words or barriers.

And little Savina merged with me, falling asleep with her ear above my heart. My tears fell because as I kissed the top of her head I felt the presence in her of my sister, Liz--her grandmother whom I held and kissed the same way when I was nine years old. With Savi I experienced the connections beyond time and space.

Avari and I walked hand in hand. She showed me paradox of which I've written so often. But in her the paradox is real in a person who knows nothing of it that she could put into words. The paradox is pure. I suppose that I could finally 'see' it as it is.

Kali is as her name suggests. Those big eyes of hers can communicate the full range of human emotion. At the Renaissance Fair she sat, a queen, on the Throne of Swords as two knights bent their knees and offered her their obeisance. In the child the beginning and ending is pure, creation and destruction can be accepted as the great round they are.

David is a mystic. Time and again he set a little walking toy on a ramp. Once he could make it walk he entered what seemed a complete ecstasy. Arms straight and stiff, hands clenched into fists, his body trembling with the awe of it. Or maybe he's a scientist. Or maybe an artist. He's what I seem to reach for. And he IS it.

This morning during contemplation the words "My people, my people..." repeated on my breath. The faces of the children, but not only the children, really every person who has wandered through my life and by some grace remains an occupant of my soul. And it came to me that each human being is given a people. It is this People that makes up our individual world. It came to me that though I might have done many things in my life, the most crucial must always have been and continue to be the choice of love for the people I've been given, the choice to serve the People, the choice to honor them and remember them and learn from them. And if I would need to choose one focus to occupy what remains of my life, it would have to be that. The People I've been given.