Ode to the children of Central America just after the landslide of 2001. |
Columbia’s Mud Children. I dreamed that I was given a mission to go and collect funds for the Mud Children. Someone gave me an umbrella and some balloons and told me, Let LOVE Lift you………………….. So I thought of the poor suffering Mud Children and immediately I was in the air. over houses over highways over fields over mountains until I was over the sea. I traveled to many different lands of many different peoples and I cried save the Mud Children! your LOVE…………… and everyone gave handfuls armfuls hat-fuls of little gold and silver coins. Some gave dollars…………………… Your Love has lifted me higher than I’ve ever been lifted before…………….. They followed me wherever I went. I went singing and begging begging for the ‘Children…………………… Your LOVE has lifted me…………. and I heard them shouting Higher!..........HIGHER!........................ Until I was over the seas of this land and gone. There was India and Indonesia Palestine Lebanon Germany Greece Even Africa, I mused where I had gathered for the Mud Children. My bags were full to bursting yet LOVE kept lifting me. I said to a child in China who had given me her piggybank Here take a balloon with LOVE written on it. I said now let LOVE lift you and she went Up Up Up Up! In the air…………….. So many blessings so much cheer will these little pennies bring to Mud Children, I thought; yet there was still something lacking. There was places that had just as many or perhaps even more Mud Children than in Columbia. In Afric in Greece Germany Lebanon Palestine…………… and more places. These people I thought, would give me nothing for Mud Children. As I was passing out of China I saw a little peasant child standing at her door gazing into the sky as if looking for me. I came by her and said, Child, what are you looking for? She said, To give this to my sisters and brothers in Columbia. And into my hand she put her last brass penny. Someone, she said, may need it more than I. I thought of those who had given some of the best of their wealth the most hefty sums that my pouches were weighted to bear me down. Yet this child gave her last brass penny….. Here were Mud Children on the doorsteps of this land yet they gave away such great sums How noble, I thought, or how foolish……………. Child, I said, keep your penny. But what about the poor Mud Children? she asked; You can give them something even more precious than this penny. What, oh tell me! she cried, that I may give them some. Send them your LOVE. Where is it? She asked, can you buy some with a penny? No. But if you love them with all your heart then you will have an abundant supply. Then take it, she said, give them my LOVE……. Then she touched her hand to her bosom and when she extended it towards me again it glowed with the embers of a Most Holy Light…………. I touched her hand and took the glow and with my own touched my breast and the glow disappeared. Now, I said, I will take your LOVE to the Mud Children. But your bags are so heavy she said, can you still fly? Do you believe I asked her instead, that LOVE will lift me? I do! She cried. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and clasped her hands tight and I dropped one of the bags of golden pennies at her feet. And before I knew what had possessed me I was over the sea and gone. Farewell, Little Mud Child of a Different Land, your LOVE will save your soul. So, since then I had visited the Mud Children from all over the world and have collected more precious gifts than I already had. But while the little golden glows made my heart lighter, the bags of burnished gold only encumbered it. So I dropped them into Little Mud Hands of Other Mud Lands and I found I could fly easier……………. So I returned to my own land where they waited for me to give them the riches to give to the Mud Children in Columbia. I had none except the radiance of the golden glowings in my breast. I said I have neither silver nor gold, and all the balloons have gone but from every land under God’s heaven have been given me prayers and tears and sympathy to convey to them from the hearts of innocent compassionate loving PEOPLES of all nations and tongues and tribes, all sent Special Delivery tied up in LOVE…………….. Then they took the umbrella and they took the song but they could take the glow. Well, they said, Go and deliver your Special Gift. I smiled. The Mud Children of Columbia are a Very Special People………….. I woke. |