Earthchild

When it became quiet on the earth, the flowers decided to bloom and spring started.
After the daffodils showed their yellow trumpeters, the pink-red buds of the Camelia broke open. The sky was a clear blue, no plane to be seen. The birds scurried between the last crunchy fall leaves and a few bees buzzed around.
The air was clean and fresh when the earth child ran into nature. You could hear his bare feet as they stepped on the dry grass and his breathing accelerated slightly. He ran to the shrub with the red branches and broke some off. They were beautiful twigs, flexible enough to make a crown that he put on his brown short hair after some handy braiding. Well, that was a good start. This silence calls for crowned earth children.
When people are silent you can hear the earth again. It was a strange sensation when people were asked to stay inside and the streets remained empty. The neighbors' cat normally did not show up, but was lying lazily in the middle of the warm asphalt the first afternoon as if she didn’t know otherwise and it seemed as if there were suddenly more birds in the garden. The earth child had to get used to it. He preferred to go to school, to play football and to borrow books in the library, but that was no longer possible from one day to another. He had to stay at home with his parents and brother for at least a month.
While putting the crown on the table, he inserted some flowers between the red branches. He cut a butterfly from a magazine and glued it to it. It would be a real earth child crown.
After a few days he had become more quit, more calm. He could sit at the table in the kitchen for a long time and look through the large windows to see if anything was moving outside; the wind, the small hailstones that fell from the sky despite the end of March and occasionally some shit of a dove flying over that fell on the terrace. Everything that happens to the earth also happens to the children of the earth. This forced period of quarantine would become a period of reflection for the earth boy. A period when he realized that the world he was born in had become busier and busier; perhaps there was more pressure than was good for the earth. You did not have to be an adult to know that there were daily traffic jams, that life was hectic and that you always had to go from one to the other, that there was a lot of pollution and that there were many diseases and stress among people. After a few days of getting used to, the child frankly liked it, the stillness. He started enjoying the days when he had no set plans, he liked that there was no traffic and he didn't miss the planes at all. He developed new ways of being and had enough of himself.
Somehow the earth child knew that life is intelligent and things do happen for a reason. A time had come for the children of the earth to stand up in these new developments and help transform other people in this transition. Reflection, peace, purity, stillness, those were the words that came to mind, that was what would be important for the future. He already knew this from his parents; the earth children are deeply loved by all their ancestors. They gave them all the love of the world and learned them that they were born to do good.

He folded his hands as deep new insights approached his crown like birds. He straightened his back, pushed his shoulders back and looked straight ahead into the world. She is a beautiful place and there is much beauty, inspite of everything.
Of course, the child also knew about the dark forest with tall trees and wild animals. The dense vegetation represents the life from which everything appears, there are certainly also setbacks and losses are taking place in this primeval forest where you can also encounter your dark shadow as a child.

However, the earth children were all coming to the edges of the forests and looked out over the wide plains.
And their voices gathered until they could be heard everywhere.
They sang:

“Nature is the beginning of everything and deserves respect. The earth will spare her children and they will be protected by all that has colour and light; flowers, insects, birds and plants, the sun and the moon, the stars and love. Bright reds, yellows and greens will empower them to let their own warm light shine and chase away dark cold forest winds. It will be beautiful. All children will feel their hearts and the earth will heal.
Live, earth child, live this life as you are meant to. Bring peace, bring beauty, bring love and share your special gifts with others. Create new ways to live, new dreams, new visions of the future.
It is your time, earth child, bloom and shine.”

Text accompanying the painting Earth Child, Ilse Wielage, April 2020