Kai-kun1

Wet.  Down.  Stretch down until casings groan and split and roots emerge. Warm.  Up.  Nose through the soil and suckle the Sun. A child touched me with his finger.  I quivered with fear, and he with curiosity.  We were both new to this world, anxious to begin our separate destinies.  Yet we began together, he and I. When I was not yet grown, I held the dying soldier in my tender branches, my leaves turned red in spring.  He buried his face into my bark, his tears of fear and regret sinking to my roots.  I caught the last tears those eyes would ever cry. My bark bit deep into the skin of a boy who climbed into my branches.  He cried and cu

One of Disney’s masterwork films is The Lion King.  While some may dismiss it as nothing more than a children’s movie, they fail to see that like most fairy tales it contains much deeper themes.  It’s a classic bildüngsroman, or coming-of-age story, that describes how a son matures into his father, or how men mature and become more like God. The first image in the movie is a rising sun.  This is consistent with the theme of “The Circle of Life.”  The sun represents a never-deviating pattern of death and rebirth through its daily rising and setting, an eternal constant that embodies the “Circle of Life.

               Dawn is an important time for us flowers.  The first rays of sunlight signify not only our awakening, but also the return of life.  It is with joy that we stretch ourselves towards the golden orb and drink in its wondrous light which is given so liberally to all. It was an early spring morning that I awoke and shook the morning dew from my velvety petals, only to find a small sprout had pushed through the earth nearby during the night.  It too lost no time in tasting its first rays of light, and, though on my western side, it had its fill.  This intrusion did not disturb me as greatly as one might think, for though I could al