Sunday evening my son and I were in my study. Like any other day inside, he first scanned my standing desk by running his fingers across the controls. Up and down my workspace went, delighting my little human.
Turning around to my bookshelves, my son slowed as he spent seconds with several bindings. His otherwise formidable energies had been channeled into seeing something. Those toddler hands were moving across the letters of paperback skins with reverence.
Slowly he removed Traherne’s Centuries from my shelf and brought it to the floor. With a dexterity I had yet to witness in him before, he opened the meditations from one of England’s finest mystics and it seemed as though he began to read. I peered over his posture to see the opening contemplation of Traherne’s first century:
An empty book is like an Infant’s Soul, in which anything may be written…
Closing the book he returned it to me. Mom had just arrived home.
***
This episode reminded me again of when Jesus set a requisite to enter the Kingdom of Heaven: become like little children.
Traherne saw our transgressions not as wild writings, but the tablet of our hearts no longer receiving. I know I have been guilty of retelling old tragedies rather than writing new melodies. I silenced the scribe in myself with my own stories. So I came to the wild to write a new ending.
When we are willing to be children again, we will find new pages to pen in the tomes of our souls. May we look upon our hearts and days with Traherne’s verse:
I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.
Get to work.
Until next week,
-Steven
If you enjoyed this piece, up next read The Mark of a Mystic. Or enjoy a different kind of essay in Charlie Bleecker & The Second Person Sermon. To all my subscribers, my gratitude for each of you continues to grow. If you have yet to subscribe, use the link below.
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So beautiful. This resonated, my friend.
I needed this.