I am a star, said the quiet child, the one pensive and solitaire who grows himself
a garden underneath the stair. It was no surprise that the clouds brought him water and the birds seeds from foreign lands. It was no surprise. A big surprise was the tears that kept falling despite the smile on his lips. Tiny crystals flowing down his little round cheeks. One quietly following the other. Every day. Every night.

He was a dear child, full of dreaminess and quiet contemplation. His friends were the flowers and the mice of the field and the butterflies and the other creatures that made a home in his wee garden. He had a wheelbarrow and a watering can. He filled the patches of dryness with sweet earth and watered with the clean fresh rain the clouds brought him. There wasn’t ever a day when he didn’t come to his garden and its creatures delighted at the sight of him. He was a soldier of Spirit. A quiet soul that marched to the sound of a hidden rhythm.

He was a child of the Universe. He knew he was a child of the Universe. He listened to the hum of harmony that was within himself. He listened to nothing else. He heard it in others although they didn’t hear it in themselves. He was ever vigilant and ever present to the sounds his heart would make, silently passing by the clatter of the day the world would make.

He was quiet in this way. And he was strong. He held to great kindness and when he put up a little fence around his garden it was with love and out of patient understanding. His neighbors were unaware of the strength of their chatter and the size of their feet. He found it best to keep to himself and his own out of reach. It had taken him a while to learn this – but when he did, it was with thanksgiving and peace of mind. His heart remained open and his mind willing as he firmly kept his garden gate closed. No one seemed to mind. No one seemed to recognize that the little scrap of land underneath the stair was a garden. And certainly it was too small to care about. Nothing so small and so hidden could mean anything. So they walked by. And so they never knew.

Constant thinking, looking, hearing, seeing, touching, absorbing, is not good for my peace of mind. I want to stop the infernal noises blowing out of the world that take over my own (simpler) view of things. Is it permissible, once a participant in this Earthly world, to let that outer picture cease? Can I go to a quiet pasture, a gentle meadow, a softly babbling brook, my inner silence, and look beyond the world made by this human mind, and that human mind, and my human mind?

I should like to think so. I should like to do so. It is in breathing in and accepting the graces of more subtle places, that I find peace. Within me is a wondrous kingdom.

Tender Truth, where are you coming from? You exist in the quiet corners only. The outer, louder, presence is fully center stage and takes up room and makes a fuss. But you, tender Truth, you are soft like the breeze on a warm day. You are still like the love that fills my heart in the midst of a vast meadow filled with caressing grasses.

You are the one I look to and you are the one I need never seek, for You are nearer than the dearest part of me. You are the Light within every day that appears through the mist that is time and space. You are hidden but not lost. You are mine and You are me. I am what you are expressing and I must acknowledge You are present. You are so quiet, so nearly not there that, I too often, find it hard to find You, not finding myself too clearly in this world of deafening noises. It is You who bring Peace and Healing. It is I who lets you be known here.

I need only to remember this, to let You shine and dispel the errors. Your ways are miraculous.

You think you live in a world that holds you bound to externals. You see a reality where you have been assigned a role with long strings of obligations attached. You are asked to carry little bits of paper to prove that all those facts are you. No wonder you tire of such a made-up world.

What are the real “facts” about you, dear one? Do you remember them?

You are the possessor of an eternal Soul made of life-affirming imaginings that fall like Stardust on your shoulders to nurture the Wings of inspiration that keep revealing the inner Life.

With your littlest Brush you paint the pictures that make your human mind sing with relief at the truth and goodness found within them.

You turn into Words the unseen Spirit of a Universe, so benevolent, so ever-present, that It can be known by even a doubting mind.

You are the incarnation of Love – a constant giving forth of limitless good, from a Heart that knew no beginning and will know no end.

These Gifts of Innerness are lovingly placed by you into the dream world to be given to the self of you who sleeps to the infinite reality, that she be told of what is within a human being.

These Gifts will bring hope to the world of mournful unaware hearts – this being a single reality. For you are all Love shining throughout infinity. Even in a dream.

I want to cry for the times I have thought myself alone and far from Meaning. I want to cry for thinking myself so alone that I had to live someone else’s truth and not my own. I want to cry for thinking You had left me and kept me far from Your Hearth. I want to cry for having thought I had to ever leave Your Garden and learn to believe I am not what I am.

I want to cry for ever believing that I can lose knowledge of what I am. I want to cry for thinking I could not be truthful in the human dream. Why would it be that I must believe in the falseness of living? Why would I ever have to go where what is said is untrue? Why would I have to go there? Why does such a place exist?

But does it really exist, or am I dreaming it up? What kind of power have I to invent such a world of misperception?

I will dry my tears and think about all this.