Your children are not your children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for
itself. \\
They come through you but not from you. \\
And though they are with you they belong not to you. \\
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, \\
For they have their own thoughts.\\
You may house their bodies but not their souls, \\
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you
cannot visit, not even in your dreams. \\
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make
them like you. \\
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. \\ 
You are the bow from which your children as living
arrows are sent forth. \\
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrow may
go swift and far. \\ 
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; \\
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
the bow that is stable. \\

---Khalil Gibran, from "The Prophet"

...  This poem comes from the pen of Jibran Khalil 
Jibran...a born Maronite Chrisitan from the village of B'sharri in the 
mountains of Lebanon. It is from his book "An-Nabi" the Prophet...about 
a prophet (not THE prophet) who, like Jibran living in the US many 
years before returning to Lebanon, is waiting for the ship to bear him 
back to him homeland. He died c. 1926 but is very alive in the Lebanese 
culture. I make this connection because through his biographer, a Mr. 
Shaban, I met several members of the Jibran family in Lebanon and one 
of whom is a physician. We discussed circumcision and the fact that 
non-Muslim Arabs of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq don't practice 
routine circumcision and their views are being accepted my some urbane 
Moslems Arabs.  !!!  Sorry for the trivia.  ----Miles Witt

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