[Corita] taught me not to remember the child I had been but to nourish the child still alive within me.*
(Jan Steward)

I almost used the title Child sacrifice for this post, the idea being that we can believe we have surrender the child within us in order to grow up or get ahead or be taken seriously.

Robin Wall Kimerer exhorts us,

That kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. And it worries me greatly that today’s children can recognise 100 corporate logos and fewer than ten plants.**

Noticing, asking questions, playing with thoughts and drawing pictures are all good ways to connect with the ever-present child.

Even an eighty year old is only a child in a fourteen billion year old universe.

(*From Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning by Heart.)
(**Robin Wall Kimerer, quoted in Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.)