Saturday, August 22, 2009

God's Children

I made a comment on another blog this past week that has continued to rattle around in my head, and be applicable to other conversations I've had. It wants to be its own post. So here it is:

It is not given to any of us to MAKE our children be anything.
They are who they are.
All we can do is our best.


There's a beautiful song by Sweet Honey in the Rock that sets to music some of the words from Kahlil Gibran's poem "On Children" (from his book The Prophet.)

Here's a YouTube video of the song as performed by an unidentified young women's trio:



Here is the original text:
---------
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you...
---------


Peace.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Their singing was beautiful. Thank you for this bit of wisdom and worship.

Barbara

Anonymous said...

I love Sweet Honey in the Rock and the women sing it beautifully. Thanks for the reminder.

Michelle O'Neil said...

I adore Sweet Honey in the Rock. And I love Kahlil Gibran! They are an amazing combination. I wrote a blog post after seeing Sweet Honey and one of the members Carol Malard actually commented! It was a highlight of my blogging adventure thus far.

FYI:Sweet Honey in the Rock has a website with some fun on line kid's stuff on it.

Anonymous said...

I just visited the website for Sweet Honey in the Rock. I will be playing whatever is available on their site for the rest of the day.

They.are.coming.to.my.city!

Oct 9.

The closest to you, I think was KC, MO.

Just saying.

Barbara

JoyMama said...

Michelle - hi, and thanks for the web site! I've had a couple of experiences where I wrote about someone & they came & commented (John Elder Robison was probably my most famous in that regard!)

Barbara - Sweet Honey in the Rock comes around this neck of the woods on occasion, though I've never made it to one of their shows. You're going to go to the concert, right? And then review it? :-)