Excerpt from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
My Aunt Mary and Uncle Ryan sent me this lovely quote about children by Kahlil Gibran. Mary sent me The Prophet years ago. It’s a book you can read over and over again…and I have, many times.
The words are delicious. Savor them. They fill the soul much like chocolate (okay I couldn’t resist that…maybe it’s because my aunt and uncle included a little care package for Dan and me, which consisted partly of a luscious box of Godiva chocolates…yum, yum!).
“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 your 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.”
