How Can I?
12 November 2001

Japanese peace crane

Katherine Phelps

How can I bring you to desire and envision the best in the world?

How can I draw you to the trees, to smell the sweet, pungent aroma of their sap; the stained glass beauty of light passing through the leaves: yellow, green, and orange? How can I move your eyes to look into the round moist eyes of a possum, a mouse, a fox, and for a moment enter into their furtive lives? Could I transport you in flight with the birds, gracefully swooping and dancing from limb to limb?

How can I gain your empathy for a child who is not your child, to feel the joy and pain of a child with skin not like your skin, with eyes, ears, nose, and fingers not like your eyes, ears, nose, and fingers? And yet that child yearns to feel comfort and security as you do, and also yearns to fully be itself, to freely grow to its fullest potential, living a meaningful and purposeful life. Can I guide you to hold within your heart the parents of the child, who yearn for the best for that child, though they may not always know how to give it, nor have the resources? They are doing the best they know how. If for a moment you can reach out to this family, see too how this family lives within every human being.

How can I expand your heart, your mind; cause you to reach out to your soul, wanting with every fibre of your being a magnificent world where you can look out and see a constant reflection of joy, as all things live together harmoniously: plants, animals, people, for our children, our grand children, our great grandchildren for a million million years, believing this is what all that evolution was for, and that we all have a right to our existence, and all existence can be connected by our love and care for it.