Confessions

What We Run To

Think about someone you love.
Now look down at your feet.
When you love someone, your feet want to go.
They want to take you right to them.
You run to them. You hold on tight.

What we love, we run to.

You run to your mom. You run to your dad.
You run to your best friend.
You run to the puppy. You run to your warm bed at night.
Your feet know the way. They go to what you love.

What we love, we run to.

Here is a little secret.
Do you want to know what you love?
Then watch where you go.
Watch what your hands reach for.
Watch who you run to first.
Your feet are telling you the truth.

What we love, we run to.

Some days your feet feel heavy and slow.
That is okay. You do not have to run.
And you cannot run to everything. That is okay too.
But you can pick one good thing.
You can pick one person who loves you.
And you can go to them.

So today, choose someone you love.
Walk to them. Or run, if you want!
Give them a big, long hug.
Say it with me: What I love, I go to.

A note for the grown-up

For the grown-up reading aloud: This comes from Augustine’s Confessions, written around 397. Near the end he says a stone falls and a flame rises, each pulled to its own place, and that love works the same way in us: what you love is the weight that carries you. The fuller idea is that the heart’s restlessness reaches for God, and the book’s best-known claim, that babies are born already sinful, has been argued over for about 1,600 years and is read very differently today. None of that belongs at bedtime. What does: noticing what we go toward, and choosing, a little, to head toward good things and the people who love us.

Would I Do It Alone?

There was a tree full of pears.
The pears were not very good.
A boy had better pears at home.
But his friends whispered: let’s go!

So off they went, late at night.
They shook the tree hard.
Down came the pears, so many pears.
Did they eat them? No!
They threw them to the pigs.

Would I do it alone?

Why did the boy do it?
He did not want the pears.
He did it because his friends were there.
Alone, he never would have.

Would I do it alone?

Friends are great. Friends make games more fun.
But sometimes friends say: let’s do a wrong thing.
Let’s grab it. Let’s break it. Let’s run!
Going along feels big and fizzy.
Saying no feels hard. That is okay.

Would I do it alone?

So stop. Take one big breath.
Ask yourself the question.
If the answer is no, you can say no.
You can say: let’s play something else.
You can still be a good friend.

Say it with me: Would I do it alone?
Next time friends say let’s go, ask it.
Then pick the thing you would do alone.

A note for the grown-up

For the grown-up reading aloud: This comes from Augustine’s Confessions. He spends a long stretch on a teenage prank, stealing pears he didn’t want and throwing them to pigs, and decides he would never have done it alone; the fun was the gang and the joke. He also reads the theft as loving wrongdoing for its own sake, a darker claim this primer leaves out. The question here is a small tool for the moment a group says let’s go. It isn’t a rule against friends, and it doesn’t make everything a child would do alone a good idea.

Just One More Minute

It is time to stop playing.
A little voice inside says: not yet.
Just one more minute.
Another little voice says: time to stop.
Both voices are you.

Just one more minute.

Have you seen a path in tall grass?
Each time you walk it, the grass bends more.
Soon the path is easy.
Your feet just go that way.

Not yet works the same way.
Each time you say it, the path gets deeper.
Soon not yet comes all by itself.

Just one more minute.

Stopping is hard. That is okay.
Big people find it hard too.
Wanting to play is not bad.
Playing is good! It is just time to stop.

You can start a new path.
Say now, just one time.
Then say it again tomorrow.
A grown-up can walk the new path with you.

Not one more minute. Now!

Say it with me: Now!
Tonight, when it is time, try it once.
Put the toy down. Say now. Then go.

A note for the grown-up

For the grown-up reading aloud: This comes from Augustine’s Confessions, written around 397. He describes habit as a chain: a want obeyed becomes a habit, and a habit not resisted starts to feel like something you must do. For years he prayed to change, only not yet, and he is honest that the change came hard and, as he saw it, with help beyond himself. The primer keeps the plain part: each not yet makes the next one easier, and one now starts a new path. The path in the grass is our picture, not his.