From Busha, With Love!

Out, playing in the sunshine…aah, the light breeze feels so nice swooshing Amelia’s and Busha’s hair back, just a bit!

As they look up at the smiling sun, they both spy (with their little eye!) something in the blue, blue sky slowly getting bigger and bigger as they watch. It gets closer and closer, and at almost the same time, Amelia and Busha laugh at the surprise. “it looks like a big pink sack, like a huge Santa Claus bag!” Amelia shouts. “Well, I never,” Busha answers. (Seriously, Busha in all her years has never heard of or seen pink Santa Claus bags falling out of the sky!)

The sack is stuffed so full, it looks like it will pop! Bulging across every inch, the now ginormous pink pouch slowly, gently falls toward them, like a leaf playing in the wind on the way to the ground. Just above their heads, the sack finally gives way, busting open.

Tumbling out, right overhead are… what? “It’s like snowfall,” Amelia’s screaming, “except, it’s summer and, these aren’t snowflakes!” She’s right – floating all around them now are shimmery bright crystals, like perfect pictures without the paper, just light and color and…no way, smells too?

Amelia and Busha each pluck one from it’s gentle path to the ground to take a look — oh, amazing! Each is a beautiful little moment, magically captured. Busha holds hers up to look more closely, and she can smell the fresh forest, hear the perfect stillness, see the pure white snow falling and twinkling in the moonlight among the giant, green-armed pine trees.

Amelia shows hers to Busha, and it’s a little stream! They listen to the bubbly gurgly noises as the water scampers over the brightly colored rocks, and enjoy the clean cool smell that lingers just a bit over the water as it hurries past.

And this one they find – it’s Baxter! Even though his little cat body is buried under a tree now, the little crystal feels just like petting his silky fine and soft fur, and they can hear his soft purr, saying yes, I like that.

Treasures, treasures treasures all around! This one – Mommy’s and Daddy’s warm hugs, that one – soft scented blossoms on the orange tree in spring, the next one – running across freshly-mowed grass that tickles your toes, here’s one – ice cream! They can actually taste it in their mouths!

So many treasures yet to discover in all these crystals! Busha sees the pink bag finally landing in a slumpy heap, and together, they read the tag on the top –

 Life! Enjoy! With all my love, 
 God

Amelia asked Busha why she is crying, but Busha just hugs her tightly.

Well this story starts, in total blackness. Can you imagine? Nothing, no light anywhere, no sound, no…thing. Then suddenly, there’s a flash, like a rip in the blackness, and the most brilliant gleaming light flows through, so quickly suddenly everything is lit up, as if…well, imagine being right next to the sun (but with a superpower that lets protects you from the heat). That bright!

Here’s Amelia and Busha, busting through the tear, flying like Superman over the most beautiful blue gem. They dive, dive, dive, down, down, down. They get closer, and closer and closer, and, what do you know, it’s not just a blue gem after all! The huge blue blankets of oceans have giant lumps of so many colors scattered all over them, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle! They fly closer to those huge lumps, and look!

There are carpets of green forests, with dots and ribbon of blue rivers and lakes. There are spiky spines of snow-tipped mountains and huge sandboxes of deserts. They fly over one sandbox with tiny specks — hey, those are camels!

“We’ve got to explore” they decide, and swoop down toward a lovely leafy forest, branches opening like arms to invite them in. Long-necked giraffes, grazing on the leaves, looking up at them, smiling and waving with a front hoof. Amelia gently hugs this new friend, and gets a big wet kiss in return as she slides down his neck, all the way to the ground.

Amelia and Busha love the feel and the smell of the cushiony grass under their feet, and notice, there’s a larger than one would expect inchworm, like in a cartoon. Busha laughs, “Hello, Inchy my friend, I haven’t seen you for a while! What would you give me to know today?”

The inchworm, holds up a card that says, “God is Love.” Busha reads the card out loud and nods with deep appreciation for Inchy’s words. He throws that card aside, and the next card reads, “You are God’s child,” and as Busha reads the card to Amelia, they both feel a surge, so strong, of a deep, full body hug through and through and through. Inchy tosses the second card aside, and Busha and Amelia together read the last card, “You are Love.” Inchy nods, then waves, and goes skoochy-stretchy inchy-bendy off.

Amelia asks Busha, “What does it mean — you are love? I am love? Mommy is love? My friends and teachers are love? The grocery store helpers are love? The bus drivers are love? The people on the news are love? All the people in China are love? The dentist is love? “

And as Amelia goes on and on, discovering all the people — who are God’s child, who are Love — a sweet happiness feeling settles in and around them both.

“Busha, I love how I’m feeling! I wish I could always feel like this,” came from Amelia, like a little prayer.

Busha smiled. “Just feel the words deep in your heart, sweet one – I am love, Daddy is love, Grandpa is love, that man driving the car is love.”

As happy as she felt, a thought came into Amelia’s head. “But Busha, sometimes people do mean things and hurt others. I know about “stranger danger,” — if everyone is love, why do the bad things happen?”

Busha thought about it, too. “I think sometimes we can all forget who we really are, so it’s a good thing you know how to be careful around people you don’t know. It doesn’t mean we can’t remember for them, in our hearts — we can remind them, silently, we are all love, deep inside. Does that make sense?”

Smiling with a nod, Amelia grabbed Busha’s hand, and off they went!

Fish-fish is such a happy little guy! He spends day after day swimming about. Sometimes he just rides the gentle push of the water which carries him along. Sometimes, he feels like getting some exercise, and turns into the push. It’s an effort, but he loves the feeling of the water flowing in and around and through him.

This is the happy little path he’s been swimming as long as he can remember (which, is really only a few months, because Fish-fish is still just a baby). ‘Who could ask for anything more,’ he often asks himself as the playful friendly water gently throws him in an easy somersault.

Ooh, there, another somersault! The little stream is especially fun-loving today, it seems! Fish-fish laughs as he’s pushed tail over fins, then fins over tail, then round and round and round like the rocks he’s seeing spinning and twirling along, beside, and beneath him. He’s having so much fun dancing with the stream, he hardly notices – he’s never been out this far! He can sense the stream is getting deeper, and he’s moving along much, much faster than ever before. It’s thrilling, for a bit, but as it gets faster and faster, Fish-fish starts to feel panicky. He tries to turn around and swim back.

He struggles and struggles flipping around and swishing his tail and fins, but the current is so strong, it flips him right back around. Forward, forward, forward, faster, faster faster he goes, no matter how hard he tries to go back! Soon, Fish-fish is so tired and frightened from trying to swim upstream without any success, he decides he needs to find something else to focus on — something, anything that he can do, instead of the trying that’s not working at all.

‘Well,’ Fish-fish says to himself, ‘I can swim straight so I don’t get bounced off the rocks.’ and he puts all of his good thoughts and efforts into missing the rocks, which, as it turns out, he’s very good at!

Fish-fish is very pleased with his new skill, swimming fast and missing rocks, until — his happiness is interrupted by a sound, like nothing he’d ever heard before. We might call it a roaring sound – something like the roar a big airplane makes jetting down a runway to take off, but, there aren’t any airplanes taking off where Fish-fish grew up, so, he only knows it’s the loudest, angriest, rumbly-tumbly sound-feeling he has ever felt and heard.

Faster faster faster he’s pushed forward, then…nothing-ness!? Nothing flowing in and out of his mouth, nothing happening when he wiggles his tail and fins, nothing familiar at all, and such brightness! In his tired and fish-out-of-water state of mind, he hears himself say, “Hmm, I wonder if I’m floating or falling or flying?” (some things he had heard of from some of the older fish.)

He was just in the middle of deciding whether to call this a floating, a falling, or a flyng, when, THUMP! His whole body BELLY-FLOPPED (ouch!) onto the water’s surface, then slipped and sluiced into the clearest, most beautiful, crystalline-light filled pool he could ever imagine!e

And oh, such wonderful creatures here! Some long, flowing tails brushed by him as he heard a whispered “How do you do?” next some brilliantly painted, fast moving, delicate shapes slipped around him as he heard “Welcome!” Fish-fish had a very fun imagination, but he could never have dreamed a place such as his new home, so perfectly lovely, it would have made him weep if fish had tears.

Joy, a perfect, peaceful joy — that’s what he is feeling. The joy all around him begins to move through him, until he feels only joy, hardly at all a fish called Fish-fish. Getting swept away and taking the leap in front of him had some scary moments, but what an exciting adventure this new world will be!

Amelia is out exploring! She wanders a little, and almost stumbles on this warm, earthy brown roll, like a thick cozy blanket, She rolls it out and shakes it, My goodness, look at the dust fly! She shakes it again – dirt, dirt, dirt, flying everywhere!

But, what is that? Clear of some of the dirt now, she can see teeny tiny dots, like candy, all across the blanket. ‘Who dropped candy on the blanket?’ she wonders. But as she gets closer, to peel one off, oh my! The dots aren’t candy at all! Each is the tippy-top top of a sleepy, cuddled up…flower! Why, the blanket is a bed, cradling a whole village of flowers, long asleep, but now beginning to stir as Amelia’s shaking shakes them out of their deep dreams.

One more shake from Amelia, and the plants all spring open, stretching their leaves and opening their cheery bright flower faces to the warmth of the sun. “Well, aren’t you remarkable?: Amelia hears herself say out loud, although there’s no one around to answer her.

Except…what’s that? There’s a very light bright sound, like a twitter of giggles, she’s hearing. Is this her imagination, or is that the sound of a not very well-organized chorus of tee-hees? It can’t possibly be the flowers, she says, this time inside her head. (Not being sure whether they were rude or friendly flowers, being cautious about what she said out loud sounded like a good plan.)

No sooner had the words formed in her head, than the faint tee-hee’s turn into louder squeals of laughter, and it’s coming from? The flowers! Amelia can hardly believe her eyes, but there they are — shaking with belly laughs, doubled-over slapping their stems with their leaves, then rearing back and almost toppling over twisting back and forth in a fit of hilarity.

Amelia is a little surprised (well, actually, she’s quite a bit surprised because no one mentioned flowers are so quick to laugh). She asks, out loud this time, because it’s apparent there’s no hiding her thoughts here, “Why are you laughing at me?”

By now the flowers are in that ‘whew, I am exhausted’ phase of laughing, bent over their stems, trying to catch their breath, wiping off the last drops of milky-white fluid that leaked out of their little flower faces, (you’ve had milk shoot out of your nose when you laugh with milk in your mouth, haven’t you? Well, like that!) Collectively, they heave a few last happy sighs. “We’re not laughing at you,” she heard in chorus of voices, “we just loved the surprise in your face! “

And they beamed and glowed, individually but all together, too, like a beautiful painting springing to life. We love you, they said, over and over in multiples, in song, in smiles, in a radiance that washed over her and through her – we love you, we love you, we love you as Amelia drifted off to happy sleep.

A beautiful, blazing blue butterfly, skims the tree tops. There she is, kissing the opening faces of smiley, welcoming daisies and daffodils, resting on a leaf-trimmed branch to listen to the murmuring stream flowing below.

The butterfly sees a wriggly green worm, inching along on a leaf beneath. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she remembers, ‘this is one of my own!” “Hello, sweet child!” she lovingly calls to him. The worm is so busy munching and inching, it’s not hearing her. A little frustrated, she lands directly in front of him, calling again, “Hello, my child!”

Well, the worm has to look up from his busy munching. In front of him is a blue-winged fantasy, like a dream! A little stunned and now a little curious, he asks, “Why would you call me ‘my child’, beautiful winged one? I am a worm, and I happen to be very busy munch-munch-munching, which of course I must continue with, right now.”

The butterfly laughs softly, “Ah, little one! It was from my egg, which I carefully placed underneath a strong leaf on this bush, that you came forth. You can’t see it now, but someday, you will be like me, free! Free to soar on the winds, free to float amongst and between the trees and the meadows, free to visit all the beautiful forests and flowers and ponds across the world!”

“Excuse me, but you must be mistaken,” says the little worm, politeu. “How could I be your child? I look nothing like you! I can’t fly, I have no wings. I inch, I munch. And excuse me, but, if I don’t continue munch-munch-munching, well, I don’t know what I’ll do!”

The butterfly smiles. “I, too, carry old, far away thoughts about inching and munching, little one. But mostly, I remember the first day – the waking in total darkness, the urgency to be free of the walls around me, the breaking through with these long thin limbs,. These wings were wet droopy puddles on my back until they dried! And now with very little effort they swish up and down and carry me up and away. ”

Swish and flutter, she flies up up and with a perfect graceful flip, lands back in front of worm. “That day, my first day! It’s so lovely riding the wind! It’s not until I saw you, my child, that I’ve remembered anything else. Somewhere, like a shadowy dream, there’s a hazy picture of feeling earthbound, of munching and inching. Maybe it’s all a story I heard long ago. You’ll find out soon enough!”

Worm thought about this a lot, and then asked “So, today, I inch, I munch, some tomorrow I go to sleep and wake up to fly the world…and after that, butterfly, then what?” The butterfly just flew off, laughing as she sailed away.