Of Church and Hammocks.....

While I was at Church (yep, Church) with my Aunty Vick - The Lad was a bit bewildered also: "Vicky? At Church?", more later ;o), the girls were making themselves hammocks out of Nana's old sheets:



We thought we saw a dust storm on the Desert Road, and A11 was trying (unsuccesfully) to take a photo of it to send to Uncle Darren, who had been freaked out by the Water Spout at Kapiti on Friday night, which he watched travel all the way in to shore, then over the top of the car he was travelling in!


Anyway, back to Church (as in the Spiritualist Church of New Zealand), this rather lovely piece struck a bit of a chord with me when a lady shared it as her reading:

On Children
by Kahlil Gibran

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.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.