Dazzling Children

Over the soft warm islands of the South Pacific, the sun traced its daily journey until MAUI shook his fat finger at the course of day and stalled it so that his mother had time to cook his food properly and serve it. Abraham mixed a child's daydream with a thought too big for a youngster's head and came up with the notion of One God... He was puzzled then when he watched the half-brothers give each other full body hugs and kisses. Ishmael held Isaac's face between his hands, saying, 'Dear brother, may your stars multiply in the heavens a thousand fold.' And Isaac bowed deeply to Ishmael. Both were smiling into a gray twilight. Then Jesus confounded wise men in the Temple. They looked around nervously avoiding each other's eyes, since they all felt stuck in the subtle webs of a child's brain with a divine mind inside. Heracles sat up right in his cart, laughing and delighted that he could squeeze the life out of Hera's snakes, their insides bulging out of their mouths, while Iphicles played the sobbing wreck. Their second-born fixed the hammock's shadow so it fell precisely on his face as he lay in a repose so still his parents could hardly believe, 'This too is our child.'