Proverbs 8:30-31 – Then Wisdom was beside the Lord like a little child, and was daily God's delight – rejoicing before God always, rejoicing in God's inhabited world, and delighting in the human race.

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There's an open field where the lawn is mowed: that's where I ask Galilee to play. It's a big enough place for her legs and her imagination to run free. It's a relatively safe space: a patchwork of grass and moss and clover and weeds ringed by wilder woods – and the threat of a grass stain is much more tolerable (to me, at least) than a scratch from a pricker or a rash from poison ivy. And there's a lot of poison ivy in those woods. I spend a lot of my time in protective wear, carefully uprooting vines to remove the danger, while begging Galilee to stay where I want her to play. However, her joy is to break into the woods: she delights more than anything in the caves she finds under magnolia trees – or the pines cones she collects from the shadows – or the trails she blazes past the oh-so-close & ever-present poison ivy. So I try to educate her. We read good books about poisonous plants and how to identify them. We meditate on memories of contact dermatitis. We chant "Leaves of Three – Let It Be." It takes a religious vigilance and a living liturgy to try to keep her little life safely within the lines of safety. When I see her wander into the danger zone, I worry – but now I see her take note of her surroundings, I see the spirit of mindfulness (the Good Spirit, I trust) bring wisdom to life. I am seeing her develop a respect for God's nature and for her body's health: she is not afraid of God's earth and all God has created within it, but rather she delights and rejoices to find the safe way a little child may dwell happily in this gigantic cosmos. I am seeing her find safety beyond my parental protection as she walks with God, in love with God's world, in the love of her human being within it. Leave it to the wisdom of a little child: Galilee now points out to *me* what we've read in those good books about irritating plants. It would appear that poison ivy's "poison" isn't all I've assumed and feared it to be. Deer eat poison ivy and find it delicious. Dogs romp through the woods and never itch at all. The oil that irritates our delicate human nature is produced to help the poison ivy's leaves retain moisture: humans are allergic, but the plant's not poisonous...it's not trying to hurt us. "So how about," she asked me last night in the ways kids do, "you make your meditation about how we can all live together if we give each other room to be okay? 'Cause God made us all and we don't have to be afraid, just respectful of each other's space." I try to educate her. Will she always be the one teaching me? God, is this how you place me safely in the way I need to live? ...Then Wisdom was beside the Lord like a little child....

Pastor Joel S Neubauer
St Mark Lutheran Church (ELCA), Yorktown, Virginia