“Sometimes when I see you I feel a tiny bit strange. Then a little tiny flame ignites inside my heart. it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and I know it is extreme Love. When I see you I feel less ill.”
Nels tells me this only a few minutes after succumbing to a short bout of crying – he’d read part of a Japanese comic book where a kitten was separated from his littermate, and was struck with a sudden wrenching sorrow. His tenderness and compassion surprise me because many children his age don’t express it so openly. But then again, he has always been this way. Tonight while bathing he tells me he is sad because he crushed a moth that he inadvertently swiped at. At their young ages my children understand, or perhaps have not been programmed to forget, that all beings desire to live in safety and peace.
I tell my children I’m proud of them. Their compassion serves them well, and it will serve others well. The world is a still-suffering entity as I have much reason to know.