Universal Children’s Day
“Who knows how to bring up a changeling generation?
Wave upon wave, they come.
Our fear of magic is not theirs to answer for.
We had one job. We have one job.
Trick babies, changing faces, changing places
all along the way.
How will we know the chrysalis for the rest of their iridescent selfhood?
To recognize their true forms, we must unclutch rusty fingers
and let go, let go, let go.
Let them turn and try on all the jewels
Turn and see their shifting colors
Watch as they hold themselves up to the light
Turn, turn, turn – surprised by the beauty
By boundless possibility . . . !
We have one job.
To bring up a changeling child, you must pur love into an active volcano
Tossing food and care into the searing mouth
Sometimes falling in. And crawling out.
Falling and crawling again and again and again,
keeping faith in rich soil for future gardens.
You will not survive it on your own.
And we cannot survive without them.
The world has stolen nothing, has given us the children we need.
Earth more generous than we may deserve.
Protect these babies: furnace-forged
trickster children with sparks in their smiles,
chewing metal where we sucked stone.
What we called death, they call transformation
Where we saw fearful endings, they invite us, laughing, to begin.”
Changeling Generation, from Incantations for Rest by Atena O. Danner, Unitarian-Universalist minister
Chorlton Unitarians 