Oh! How blessed you are!

For both your vocation and avocation call you to innervation!

A child’s world can be a deadening place.

Spark less, joy less, dangerous, exhausting.

Where dreams are born only to die, unfulfilled.

Where iron-cell-doors are slammed shut in the face

of curiosity, discovery and hope.

But your daily work affords you the glorious opportunity

to be the consummate creator of the small patch of earth you have hoed

which waits for each seed you have sown to reach fruition.

Where flowers you may never see will some day revel in the sun

to gift the earth, even the scent of it,

with new life and thought,

sustaining sustenance ,

unencumbered growth

and good people.

Oh! Dear colleagues!

It’s strenuous work!

(I know!)

For so many of your charges are stuck in the muck of living their lives

through no fault of their own!

And often that mule who tugs your plow while you struggle in your harness

is just to damn tired to roll that boulder out from underground.

So, grimace when you must.

Pause, if that is all you can do.

Then turn ’round,

pick up those straps,

wrap them to your back

and push on, both plow and mule if he’s just too done for the day!

But be Thou neither deceived nor dismayed!

For come what ever may,

it is a matter of Life!