“God made the world, mama! God made the whole world!”

How can I describe the beauty of a green tunnel, a pathway through the trees, with moist, black earth under every step, roots undulating through it, and my daughter, a heavy-limbed pixie, built out of the same stuff; tawny flesh and bouncing curls, pushing through space like a miniature athlete, testing-out small limbs and lungs, with such an earnest effort of body and lightness of spirit?

She dives like a dolphin through a tube turning with layers of green light. It curls over her like a rolling wave as she turns back and back to me while flying forward, to make sure I’m watching her—that I’m still coming. Thrusting forward, her feet barely touch the ground.

Her limbs are like the trees’ limbs all around; her face, lit-up from within like the canopy of leaves above us. Her eyes are seed-like crescents. They sparkle with what animates matter and renders it undeniably alive. She gestures as she runs, lighting briefly here and there, to tell me again and again the good news:

“God made the world, mama! God made the whole world!”

How can I tell my wonder at the goodness of my own little child, unfolding, full of faith?

God made the world, alright. And he made you, little one.

And He made you out of me: my cells drawn out and replicated by a miracle to form yours. My best thoughts, like tender roots, render pathways across your delicate brain. Germinating in a good soil, they have already begun to fall from your pink lips, unspoiled, like the Bread of Angels.

I planted you in faith. Through you comes the purest praise I’ve ever offered up. And you turn back to me while yet going forward, giving back to your tired mama, medicine, from what springs forth from your young branches.

“The just will flourish like the palm-tree and grow like a Lebanon cedar. Planted in the house of the Lord they will flourish…still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green…”

And as always, my heart turns to the sad contrast between here and there. Something has lately set in my body and mind like a clock, counting off the hours, the paces that lead me away from the joy of my youth, and draw me along this inevitable path of nature, towards the end of natural life. I labour to follow my little one through these woods.

Will I ever again be as young as you are, little tree? Free from pain and heaviness? Will I awaken in a heaven as real as the one you now inhabit in your trusting vision of the world, surrounded by God in every direction, loved and safe in what is for you, a new earth?

…still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green…

(Psalm 92)