Where We Start and Where We End Up

                     Where We Start and Where We End Up

There are so many lessons to be had in the course of a day it astounds me. We may gain an education by thinking outloud, viewing something new, going for a walk, or even (as described by Reverend McGee) while asleep:

Hearing a thud in the night, and further alarmed by her child’s crying, the mother ran to her daughter’s bedroom where she found her little girl on the floor, in tears.
“My child! How did it happen that you fell out of your bed?”
she asked.
“Well,” said the child, “I think I stayed too close to the place where I got in.”

Which is the sort of experience that may be tucked in a pocket and referred back to over an entire lifetime. We are more in danger of falling if we insist on staying put. It’s just antithetical to human nature.

Watercolor illustration by Barbara Sparhawk, Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, Bed in Summer.

Bed In Summer

Bed In Summer  by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people’s feet

Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?