It is an amazing fact, often overlooked and taken for granted, how children catch, absorb and take on as their own the behavior, the values, the attitudes and even the expressions of those around them. I hear Jane singing and I only have to close my eyes to see Kathleen singing in the same style and voice. I watch Jonathan deeply engrossed with his Lego blocks and I am transported back in time when Martin was himself tinkering and creating with his own Legos.
There was a poem I first came across when I was teaching in Xavier. “Children Learn What They Live” has influenced my beliefs and practices on how to rear and raise children. I have seen how when given affirmation and acceptance, children learn how to have a positive self-image and this enables them to love others more spontaneously. I have seen how praise and recognition makes for better persons of children more than criticism and ridicule do.
I look at myself and I see today a lot of what I remember of Tatang and Ima. All the good things I like in myself, I remember seeing these in them as a child. And on a deeper level, all that is good and true and beautiful in my life, I can trace back to Our Father.
The Lord is gracious and merciful.
~ Psalm 145
Jesus answered the Jews:
“My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”
For this reason they tried all the more to kill him,
because he not only broke the sabbath
but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own,
but only what he sees the Father doing;
for what he does, the Son will do also.
For the Father loves the Son
and shows him everything that he himself does,
and he will show him greater works than these,
so that you may be amazed.
John 5:17-30