What I Saw On My Summer Vacation

From Mother Rabbit I saw how to bravely protect your children from danger.

From her also, that even with good mothering, all your children, because of nature and their surroundings, might not make it!

From Johnny Crow I learned that predators return again and again, but after awhile they trip themselves up because of their loud arrogance.

From Chip, the baby chipmunk, I learned how easily we all are hurt; and, how quickly we can be caught.

From Mr. Squirrel, how we can get ourselves into all sorts of difficulties by our jumpiness, and that we need friends to pull us out.

From Billy Beetle I learned that evil can come in swarms and must be firmly dealt with or it will destroy what all of us have tried to build.

From Randy Raccoon, that some people just aren't careful enough to learn the difference between a 'coon and a skunk!

From Hummingbirds I learned to break the tensions of life with playfulness and joy.

From flowers, that Beauty attracts evil as well as Beauty, and must have love and protection.

From excited and thoughtless Boys and their fireworks, I learned that work for peace can be destroyed in several loud explosions, and rebuilding is very difficult.

From a Green Worm I learned that victims are often victims because they are blind and cannot act.

And from the white head and pointed little face of an Opossum stopped and startled by a porch light in the darkness, I saw beauty where others have seen ugliness, and I understood what superstition is.

Looking Up

It's good to look where you are going, isn't it? But once in awhile we have to look up. Otherwise, no higher view comes into our life, no feeling of expanding and being free.
If you put a buzzard in a pen six or eight feet square and entirely open at the top, the bird, even though it can fly, will be a complete prisoner. Why?
Because a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of ten or twelve feet. Without that space to run, he will not even try to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top!

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is put on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once it takes off like a flash.

A bumblebee if dropped into an open glass or jar will be there until it dies, unless you take it out. It never sees the way to escape at the top, but always tries to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. That is where its instinct goes: it will seek a way where no way exists, until it completely destroys itself!
Aren't many of us like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee? We are struggling with all our problems and difficulties, not realizing how important it is to look up to find the answer right above us.
UP, of course, means beyond our petty desires and habits of sense and mind. It means the Spirit, where our true Home is.