Return to innocence
Before I retire for the night, let me empty my whirling thoughts. Tonight or this morning's theme is children! The little monkeys who raid the cookie jar when you turn your back, the stubborn donkeys who must have that giant Pooh bear, the chirpy angels who crawl on your tummy in the morning...what can we do without them?
Children see more than grown-ups do. My 5-year-old brother can sense atmosphere change in the room like a radar. He neutralises the charging tension or brooding shroud with his sackful of antics. And oh my, aren't we enchanted by my darling christopher robin? *Grins*
The birth of christopher has thrown the family into ecstasy and mayhem. Gone is the quietness and order. We've grown attuned to his endless chatter and sounds of Disney playhouse cartoons from the tube. On the days chris goes shopping with dad, the household swings to silence. And we ask each other, "Isn't the house so quiet?"
Children just have this irresistable charm on adults. God has made them to be loved. Their laughter is infectious and their baby scent is full of sunshine and goodness. We can't help but love them. And children know how to love just as much too.
However on some meadows and orchards, children cannot be seen. Behind the curtains, some children cry through the darkness. In some rundown shacks, children are slaughtered inhumanely for their organs. On dingy neon streets, children peddle their ware to preying paedophiles. In affluent cosmopolitan cities, latchkey children return to an empty home. Our angels are trapped in every imaginable slit of society. But I'm powerless to stop this tragedy.
The African countries are deeply embroiled in civil wars. Likewise for Israel and the Palestine. In Africa there're child soldiers; In the Middle East there're child suicide bombers. Some have barely reached puberty. But here they are, put at the forefront of a war. A concept that escapes their understanding but taught to them in the hard way.
In The Smoke Jumper, a pair of twin brothers under the age of 12 were captured by the radical troops and forced to commit atrocities beyond our imagination. They raped their mother and sisters in succession and clubbed them to death, one by one. Burnt their home, village, and neighbours to blackened remains. This brutal unspeakable sin was to 'toughen' them up and severe all secular ties. When the children grew too weak to fight, they were left in the bushes to wilt.
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this? -Albert Camus
With this, I thank god for giving me a zoo of siblings. I can't believe how lucky I am.
posted by Michelle at
4:57 AM
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