Today a baby came to visit – barely one week old.
His ears and fingers and his tender mouth, so perfect, so amazing.
He’s brand new within the earthly stream of life – all so strange and unaccustomed.
This hunger – what is it? It keeps coming back. I’m so in need. Need. Need.
I love the closeness of Mom’s large warm body – I need its touch, its radiating energy, its rhythm,
The vibrations of its voice – I remember those! They bring me back to when I floated,
Warm and fed and safe – when I needed nothing else.
But now, where am I? What am I? Getting here was such a tiring trip.
And yet, I think I might begin to know the joy of waking up, exploring, discovering, learning.
I might yet be all right.
But where’s that food I crave?
I’ve never felt such needs…. Nor the wondrous joy when they are met and all is well again.
I’m so happy to be held and loved – that too is new.
And Ah, the sweetness of drifting off to sleep —
And waking once again to life!

REFLECTION: Meeting Stanley, our newborn neighbor this morning was a gift. Of course, we’re programed to respond in wonder at the sight of a newborn – They are so small, so perfect, so amazing, so tender and innocent – and vulnerable. For some reason, I also, as I watched him against his mother in the stretchy, ingenious sling in which she carried him, was drawn to wonder what he was experiencing in that moment – one minute peaceful, and the next fretful. His mom said “It’s always time to eat with him.” Of course – everyone has passed through that newly arrived phase of being totally dependent on someone. How complete that need is in a neonate.
Most people as they mature grow to hate the feeling of dependency – and yet we continue to long for it all our lives. Being on earth, learning to flex with the needs of a physical earthbound body, is, by nature, challenging. Embodied life is definitely paradoxical. Everyone I meet each day is somewhere on same life path between the total physical dependency and need of early infancy, and the ultimate goal of rediscovering our total spiritual dependence on the Universe, in oneness with all that is created. We all explore illusions that we’re on our own, abandoned or in power – and then uncover truth, and know our oneness.