Who Am I? Who Am I Not?

I was picking out avocados when this woman wearing white pants and a bright pink scarf tied around her waist came over to smile at Phoenix.

What a beautiful boy, she said.  May God bless you to raise him with wisdom.

Right there.  Avocado in hand.  I stopped dead in my tracks and tears started to swell.

I’m getting used to strangers coming up and cooing over Phoenix and saying what a “big boy” he is.  But these words really hit me.

They were sweet but direct.  Like a message from some far-away land, washed ashore, and tucked inside a glass bottle.

I could barely make it past the apples, the raspberries on sale for ninety-nine cents, the watermelons stacked in a pyramid until the tears started falling.

I want nothing more than to raise this boy with wisdom.  To show him all the good that exists inside his little body–how the universe is contained in each of his cells.

I want to believe that my decisions in child-rearing will rise from a place deeply connected to Source. That whatever truths I know in my heart, will be reflected in my actions and words.  That I will do my best always–to stay in the present moment.  To meet him exactly where he is–instead of where I wish for him to go or be or do.

But somehow that word wisdom scratched a current of emotion inside me.

Who am I to know the first thing about wisdom?

I don’t own a saffron cloak and there are days that I’m plagued by nothing but negative thoughts.

But I do know that sometimes I look at Phoenix and I get so overwhelmed with love that I swear the entire world stops for a minute.  I think it happened even that morning when we turned the corner onto the canned goods aisle.

So maybe I don’t need anything extra–don’t need to be renown by many–or write any spiritual books–or eat only organic, seasonal foods.

Wisdom isn’t attached to anything our mind can conjure up anyways.  It can’t be packaged or branded or sold in the details of some exotic retreat.

It’s simply the language of our hearts.  A multitude of words and feelings.  Laced and tied together.

Hanging from branches defined as love.

Who am I to know the first thing about wisdom?  Who am I not?

May God bless us all, not with the wisdom–but oh, the understanding to access it. And especially the courage to let it light our way.