Another morning surrounded by shining eyes in faces beaming upwards.

Seven to eight years old.  A class full of movement and imagination . . . they do not want information, hard cold facts of dead information, they do not want the intellectual . . . they live in a world of imagination, and they want living pictures of a world-story that brings to life in them that which inspires them forwards in growth and wonder.

They live in that place of awe from which we all rise and fall, and in their formative years they must not be hurried out of that space, they must not be forced into a quantified reality which makes no allowance for Spirit.

They ask for words that they can turn into living reality by their own doings . . . so we spoke of food, shelter and companionship . . . the fundamental human needs.  I told them how to build shelters out of sticks and grass, how to make fires from male and female pieces of wood.  I told them of a world without water, but filled with everything that anyone could need . . . a world not cluttered with incidental ‘things’ which they do not ask about . . . their questions are all to do with what is essential to life.

And standing afterwards, surrounded by  these endless excited questions, I am struck by how in every way they look up to us. 

 Physically they look ‘up’ to us, spiritually they look ‘up’ to us . . . in their whole relationship with the world of the adult and parent, the children look and ask ‘upwards’.  And so, from this raised, bigger place . . . we adults and teachers must, for them, be there.