My Children

What can I say?

 A little child shall lead them.

What the hell does that mean? Don't google it. You'll get all sorts of hits from all sorts of weirdos. Especially bible reading/translating/interpreting weirdos.

It means, to us, 'a little child shall lead us', doesn't it? That's the colloquial meaning of it. That's what it means to us, the dudes in the pub, the factory, stuck in the home with the kids, stuck  in the job, stuck anywhere in our lives just wondering about it all...

We hear this phrase and we don't have any special scholarship in bible studies or any other such crap. We just think of a little child leading. Us.

Because we know we lead the children.

But. But. I learn from my life with my children that they lead me.

They control my live. That's a given.  A given that's without dispute and yet at the same time largely ignored, unrecognised, uncatered for.

Children, your children, are game changers. They will chance your life. You are dead. Your life is dead. Now begins something else again.

That's a fact.

So in that sense they 'lead' inasmuch as they control. Influence so heavily.

But I find more.

They demonstrate my humanity to me.

My animality - you can see that, right? My 'animality', the human animal, they demonstrate that because they're born as just that: a human 'animal'.

And that shades into psychology, too. And all the other 'ologies'.

They show me who I am. At core. In essence. Who I was before I was conditioned, controlled, educated, influenced, directed...

So in that sense they 'lead'. And that's a more direct sense, isn't it?

But there's something else. And I better cut to the chase because I'm running out of energy.

They lead in love. They are so beautiful. They are so beautiful. They live in a world of beauty and they are a world of beauty. And happiness.

And they say to us, all the time: 'why not stay with the happiness and the beauty and the love?'

That's what they're saying.

All the time.

And we're so blind to it.

Because we're so hurt.

So covered in scar tissue.

From our decades of violence and hatred and callous indifference...

Our devotion to mammon. Our unquestioned devotion. That's the point.

Our devotion to our masters.  Our unquestioned devotion. That's the point.

We cannot explain this dereliction to our children. We cannot explain our self imposed servitude, slavery, ignorance, madness, despair, futility, desperation to our children.....  we can't explain it to ourselves... we can't even admit it, see it, recognise it...  yet we do try to explain it to our children. Explain it and justify it. With a straight face. Solemnly. As wisdom from on high.

We do.

I have looked on the face of god and it was as me, but as a child, smiling and full of love, without knowledge of evil, without dissatisfaction or desire for preference.  I looked on the face of god and I was nothing. Nothing.

After all these years.

Bit of a laugh, eh?