Some early thoughts from Dad after my birth

The Week of your birth

Everything has Changed since your arrival. Not so much in the manner in which I live, although that has received something of a shock too, but the possibilities for growth in life, your life, my life, frances’ life, and our life as a family.

I cried today as you, only five days old, gazed out the window, swaddled in my arms, at the sun streaming through the mist and the trees draped in magisterial presence. You who have just emerged from the interior, where, if one can know anything about it at all, it is surely that the laws of life are different there. You, who are Emerging into a world of distance and separation, into our lives, paradoxically bringing us together. As the sun, now outside our bodies, brings us into connection with everything else, so your pulsing, beautiful form connects one more piece of this cosmic puzzle.

You came so quickly, so radically upon the scene, what preparation can anyone have for such a moment. For such a life, unclothed, precious and frail, and powerful all at once. Being now, you are nowhere else. A condensation of your spirit, a contraction in order to understand, grow and ultimately expand. A choice, for indeed you have chosen, and we have responded.


"The child before birth is in a protective envelope of water, prior
to it’s final entry into earthly activity. As though lying within a
Sphere it moulds its as yet liquid form, which gradually becomes
More condensed. On being born it leaves the spherical space of
Water and enters into a relationship with the directional forces
Of the earth. The more it yields to these forces the more its body
Becomes solidified, which is essential to standing upright and
Learning to walk." (Schwenck 24)

The movement of liquid, the vortical, spiral flows reveal to us here on earth a sense of the spiritual world from whence you came. The interpenetration of waveforms, from all directions, coalesce singularly. The waveforms from all of life, from the stars, from myself and mother, from the room you were born in and our midwife cynthia who coaxed your precious life into our hands for the first time. From your birth time and the position of the moon and sun and planets all circling your singular being, open to it all, receiving, loving.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny:
Struggles a cell faces as it develops from a fertilized egg
To a mature organism follows many of the paths cells forged
As they evolved from a primordial cell to a human being.



In some mysterious way, we share in the life of every other living being on this planet. and When looked at closely, where in fact does life end?

And thus the mystery of you. Because after all is said and done, you are you, not any of these formative forces, not mine, or mother’s , but your own, uniquely you. It is your job to find the truth of that statement. We do not originally belong to this earth.

You look up at me with those dark pooled eyes. Your face making a myriad of expressions: a slight wrinkling of the brow, a sly grin, a big yawn, your mouth curling into a slight “o” shape … mostly you sleep with a presence which is sensible to those around you. A presence which belongs to children and toward which we, as adults, strive to return, with all the intervening baggage intact.

Mark 10:15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of
God as a little child will never enter it.

Dec 28 2004: Gabriella, you’ve grown a little more into your body. I see it in the way you curl up on my stomach, wedged between it and the couch, arms drawn in, hands clenched. You have almost grown out of your first outfit.

Despite this, I still have a sense of you – separate from this body which you as yet have very little control over. Your body is immature and yet you are there – or someone is there beyond this little frame which mother and I, and earth, have provided for you – someone who will assume the name Gabriella only later.

You know my voice. Sometimes you turn towards me as I speak, quietly taking in, and again I fall into those eyes.



Jan 20 2005: A month and a week – your earthly life has passed – having you here has not yet become ordinary – you are extraordinary.

Of course, with you here now, I cannot help but reflect upon myself in light of the fact that you are receiving from me. And so the tendencies that have plagued me become heightened. I want so much to be an example – yet I perceive, in some circumstances, only failure. I know with my mind that what I am talking about – i.e.”my problems or shortcomings”, from an inner standpoint, entirely cease to be in that conflicting form so fraught with unwarranted judgement. Yet that is not what I feel – and that my dear – is what it all hinges upon. My feelings are not free – I fear this is the example I am giving you.

So be it, this is earth, and we are here to learn from these conditions as they are given to us. Or from another perspective, as we have created them. You see, I take too much credit, my part in this interchange, while it may seem large from my perspective as a parent, ultimately it is your part that counts. The basis to which we come to self-knowledge and understanding is that which
Under-stands us, that is the mystery of Self. Our roots grow deeper and wider than our mother and father. The tree includes many things not much dreamt of in ordinary life.

Mar 3 2005:
With a tremendous breath, a releasing pressure, you scream. You let your life become known to your utmost. We do our best to comfort, but you are your own, fully a cry, and necessary no doubt … a sign of what? It must be the hardest thing in the world to make this little form fit.
Remember that cry, it is deep within you, it is a primary response of your life, here … Remember, it is vital.