Radiate Love

““If nature has commanded that of all the animals, infancy shall last longest in human beings it is because nature knows how many rivers there are to cross and paths to retrace. Nature provides time for mistakes to be corrected, for prejudices to be overcome, and for children to catch their breath.” Loris Malaguzzi, in The Hundred Languages of Children”

“The child is made of one hundred. The child has a hundred languages a hundred hands a hundred thoughts a hundred ways of thinking of playing, of speaking. A hundred always a hundred ways of listening of marveling of loving a hundred joys for singing and understanding a hundred worlds to discover a hundred worlds to invent a hundred worlds to dream. The child has a hundred languages (and a hundred hundred more) but they steal ninety-nine. The school and the culture separate the head from the body. They tell the child: to think without hands to do without head to listen and not to speak to understand without joy to love and to marvel only at Easter and Christmas. They tell the child: to discover the world already there and of the hundred they steal ninety-nine. They tell the child: that work and play reality and fantasy science and imagination sky and earth reason and dream are things that do not belong together. And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there. The child says: No way. The hundred is there.”

“Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment.”

“Do not tell them how to do it. Show them how to do it and do not say a word. If you tell them, they will watch your lips move. If you show them, they will want to do it themselves.”

“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”

“If you can’t change a fact of life, then be smart enough to walk away from it.”

“Life is beautiful, just very unfair.”

“Do as you will, but harm no one. What you give will be returned to you threefold. Fall in love whenever you can.”

“Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don’t think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year. It is the season of reversals, when the birds no longer sing in the morning and the evenings are made up of equal parts golden light and black clouds. The rock-solid and the tenuous can easily exchange places until everything you know can be questioned and put into doubt.”

“It doesn’t matter what people tell you. It doesn’t matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you’re headed in the exact right direction.”

“If you dropped something belonging to the man you loved into a candle flame, then added pine needles and marigold flowers, he would arrive on your doorstep by morning, so you would do well to be certain you wanted him there.”

“When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you’re with me always.”

“I read books as though I were eating apples, core and all, starved for those pages, hungry for every word that told me about things I didn’t yet have, but still wanted terribly, wanted until it hurt.”

Witches take their names from places, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry, and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that’s sewn is that much stronger. Ruin is the milk all witches must drink; it’s the lesson they learn and the diet they’re fed upon.

“Know that the only remedy for love is to love more.”

“What was this world without love?”