Looking with your heart

I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, eyes closed. It was as sweet as a feast. That water was more than merely a drink. It was born of our walk beneath the stars, of the song of the pulley, of the effort of my arms. It did the heart good, like a present. When I was a little boy, the Christmas tree lights, the music of midnight mass, the tenderness of people's smiles made up, in the same way, the whole radiance of the Christmas present I received.

"People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden...yet they don't find what they're looking for..."

"They don't find it," I answered.

"And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."

"Of course," I answered.

And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart."

The other day, I found a copy of Antoine De Saint-Exupery's book, The Little Prince, a childhood classic which I purchased and read it through with that same soothing feeling I remember some thirty years ago when I first came into contact with the story.

How often do we question what we see beyond the fear that we may not really know at all what we once affirmed as reality? When we begin to believe in the dream, we begin to question the foundation our home was built upon. Most stop there. But, those who allow the fires to consume all that was built trust that one day they will build anew. So, question away until you begin seeing things with your heart and my prayer will be that the ashes soon be cleared from all of our eyes.

We've always had what we've been looking for all along. To find it, we may do well to simply forget.