Nursery Rhymes for Adult Spiritual Enrichment

Hush a Bye Baby

Hush a bye baby on the tree topWhen the wind blows the cradle will rockWhen the bow breaks the cradle will fallAnd down will come baby cradle and all.

We might have images in our mind of mothers singing this lullaby to put their own children to sleep. In today's world, singing this to a baby might arouse suspicion from neighbors who could call child protective services. If this nursery rhyme showed up in the newspaper as some odd personal ad it might draw the attention of local law enforcement, FBI, or homeland security! Child abuse in a world gone mad is a very serious concern and has profound adverse consequences to a community. Infants are the essence of everything that makes us a nurturing, gentle, and meek person, so it must be an act of terror to leave a baby in a tree branch and blowing in the wind knowing that it will break apart to cause the baby to hit the ground. We need to draw spiritual light from this nursery rhyme

The inner life of most people house enough civil attitudes to relate to infants in a tender and nurturing way. To think or feel an urge to endanger a child is far from the spirit that permeates their inner state. It is a horrid state of internal affairs to have cruel and hateful intentions towards those in need of caring warmth from loving kindness. A compassionate spirit displays goodwill for the meek and gentle babe representing peace. To think in terms of a timetable of when and how a planned tragedy will transpire towards the innocent is to incite violence and harsh attitudes of aggression. It's a sadistic inner life that thrives on despair and evilness to jeopardize a child that espouses all the possibilities of the future. That future should be full of optimism through faith, joy, and goodness, but not haphazardly blowing in the wind to fall tragically to the ground. Fatal endings result because the inner life becomes out of control with turmoil, anguish, and urges to act out deviantly. There is no patience for the coming of tranquility. From within, we need to persevere in soft and tender child like qualities. This requires self control when we sense inner impulses that potentially jeopardizes the welfare of the environment and people around us. Patience is what enables us to keep the babe in the cradle within a secure location, and not endangered through the tumult of impatience and frustration.

To open self to newborn babes is to be open to all the nurturing and tender qualities necessary to care for the infant. Our caring attitude towards children is what enables our inner life to blossom with spiritual fruitfulness. What would happen to all our fruitful reserves if we place self in hazardous situations in which we knew would result in adverse consequences? We would desolate our inner being of nurturing qualities, and at the same time be unfit mentally, emotionally, and physically to care for a child. Our image would be of a reckless, out of control, and impulsive person whose final result would ultimately be fatal. When we feel the winds of day to day experiences blowing and threatening to wreak havoc on our life, we need purpose and determination that comes by persevering in soft and tender qualities. In that perseverance, we learn self-control to restrain self from the temptation of shaking the branches with the intent of aggravating the situation within the blowing winds. With that self-control, we inherit patience while waiting for the calming of the winds as we blossom with serenity.

From our inner life, we need something to regulate the winds that shake the branches which incite the urge to facilitate fatal effects. If that inner regulation is not found then we could never find it within self to care for a vulnerable and dependent child. That child would be put in jeopardy of bodily harm, suffer abuse under "care givers," and be in a chaotic and unstable situation. The unregulated violence, harshness, and aggression that rages inside the adult would be externalized onto the children, and our society. However, when our mind focuses on the attitude of a meek and gentle spirit of peace then we are focused on what regulates the threatening winds that shake the branches where the babe lies. Inner stability is established with a serene purpose, and in that stability is the ability to care, nurture, and bring a safe and secure atmosphere to the vulnerable, needy, and dependent people of our environment.

Our relationship to tender and peaceable qualities, like our relationship to children, depends on the moist, soft, and tender qualities of our inner life. I'm sure we all know what is meant by being air dried; we dry our clothing in the fresh blowing wind opposed to a mechanical dryer, or we leave our dishes out to air dry opposed to using a towel or automatic dish dryer. To have our inner life air dried would be to allow the winds of hate, intolerance, sensual abuses, and exclusion to dry the qualities of the babe from our inward being. In turn, that is to leave a babe blowing in the ill winds of cruel intentions abused by those who should be caring for them. In those winds, there are no oceans of love, no raindrops of kindness, and no river of goodwill towards the meek and gentle qualities of the world. Even as we experience the stormy winds, we must welcome the moistness of love, acceptance, tolerance, and sensual intimacy to be part of our inner attitude. This keeps the qualities of the babe alive and well.

Our relationship to a baby relates to our relationship to the deity of this universe. Everything good, peaceable, and civil is from a reverent attitude to the living deity of our inner life. Parallel to that, our nurturing, caring, and gentle ways with babes put us in a reverent attitude to the infinite presence of this world. When we recklessly leave the vulnerable and dependent people blowing in hazardous winds, then we are simultaneously revealing a reckless attitude towards infinite intelligence and infinite power. In other words, being abusive to children leaves us powerless, ignorant, and with limited ability to expand relating to the future viability of humanity. That's because we lose value for the tenderness of spiritual fruitfulness, leave softness subject to unsafe and insecure circumstances, become parched and hardened to peaceable qualities, disrespect the supernatural spiritual world, and become infested with negative sentiments towards meek and gentle qualities. A healthy relationship with the babe brings us into a healthy relationship with the universal deity, which imparts spiritual fruitfulness, tranquility, tenderness, reverence to the spiritual dimension, and fills us with optimism.

Having the qualities of a babe in us, or not having the qualities of the babe in us, shapes the energy of our spirit that comes forth from us. Destructive aggression is not of the babe, a narcissistic independence is not of the babe, and adventurous pursuit of the vulnerable is not of the babe. Those behaviors are far from nurturing of the needy, but instead cause despair, pessimism, and evilness to manifest within the wind sthat blow the branches that hold the babe. In that negative energy, the gentle peaceable spirit of the infant would be jeopardized to literal bring down babies with a tragic crash, and to bring down literal peaceful civilizations with a crash full of thunder and lightening. The attitude of faith, joy, and goodness is found within the spirit of optimism which embraces meek, gentle, and peaceful interactions. In that positive energy are words, behaviors, and beliefs that inspire hope as the hazardous winds blow. That hope encourages the babe to awaken, be alert, and to take refuge in the cushion of spiritual comfort among the "fallen." Instead of "hush baby," we encourage the baby to awaken to the self-expression of it's identity, when the winds blow we offer comfort and hope, and when the bow breaks we offer unconditional compassion to lessen the impact of the crash.