LITTLE BOY LOST
Pondering the enigma of communication one day out in the back country of my hills, I witnessed the happy reunion of a father and his five-year-old son who had been lost in the woods for many hours. I knew the boy would be found—and I knew I knew—but despite the positive knowing, I was unable to allay the father’s fears or bring him to understand the Truth I saw. Then, even as I wondered—even as I asked about this inability to communicate when it seemed so important to do it—I saw the little boy and the father find each other.
Oh, such a reunion! A barefoot ragamuffin came running out of the woods shouting with all his might, “Daddy! Daddy!” and I saw the father, unashamedly sobbing, sweep the child into his arms. All he could say was, “Hallelujah! Praise God!” again and again. “Hallelujah! Praise God!”
Then and there, it was my joy to see the communication was ever so much more than fancy words, proper grammar and intellectual nuances; more than education and cultured sophistication. I saw uninhibited enthusiasm say more in an instant than all the words of the encyclopedia heaped upon all the words of the Bible. I saw uninhibited being, stripped of its world-be possessor. In the twinkling of a “Praise God” and a “Daddy, Daddy,” I learned that words are just words. Too many are a clutter, and pompous ones a waste. Simple, unpretentious, tender childlikeness—honesty—stirs the Heart and overthrows the intellect, leaving the child-we-are in the Father’s arms.
Since those days, I have been a child again wandering along the back roads and river banks, enjoying, enjoying… Since that time I have known that the intellectual, philosophical presentation of words is not the all-fired important thing I had made of it before. Then and there I determined, as best I could, to end my own use of pompous metaphysical language and attempt to say whatever might be necessary to say in the tender, simple way so natural to us all.
This is a portion of the simplicity you and I have discovered, dear reader. It tells the Story to the first and the last alike.
“Ah, but what of our dignity if we act so simply?” someone asks.
There has never been more Dignity in all the world than the child who runs to his Father and whispers, “I am home again! I am home again!” — William Samuel
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Yes, this it the simplicity that found me. Sweet and easy, nothing standing between this life that lives the life I am being. In this honest light, with the heart open to it all, there is nothing contrived, there is only the sweet flow of living as this freedom unfolding in the illimitable light of myself. It is freedom that moves me, it is bold and daring, it is tender and real, it carries me with it. It is in the feeling, real feeling, in the same way we feel the song, the music, artwork, we feel it conveying in a wholeness that speaks to us. We open our heart to life, feeling life move us, touch us, take us. Here we know what love is and we let it lead the way. — Sandy Jones