Soup in the Sky

Think sideways! - Edward de Bono in the Zen Calendar (July 21, 2007).

Day 324. Short post tonight. My December fatigue molecules seem to be multiplying.

Almost every Pilates class I attend generates blog material (not to mention a really firm butt for cushion sitting!) Today my teacher Sharin told a delightful story about a visit with her favorite three-year-old, Mikayla. Sharin, in her infinite wisdom, had purchased a turtle toy for Mikayla's birthday. This wasn't just any turtle -- it happened to be equipped with a feature that projected starry constellations, in all their celestial splendor, onto the ceiling of a darkened three-year-old's bedroom. Mikayla was enchanted.

As a gifted Bodhisattva who really understands what it is like being three, Sharin began Mikayla's first Turtle Planetarium Show by projecting the Little Dipper onto her bedroom ceiling. While explaining the shape and makeup of the Little Dipper, it occurred to Sharin to enlist a visual aid. She dashed into the kitchen and returned with a soup ladle. "Do you know what this is called?" she asked. Mikayla said that she didn't, and Sharin told her it was sometimes called a ladle and sometimes a dipper. "What is it for?" Mikayla wondered. "You use it to serve soup," was Sharin's answer. She then held the ladle up to the ceiling to demonstrate it's resemblance to the Little Dipper.

Switching skies with the Turtle Projector, Sharin showed Mikayla had to locate the Little Dipper at different times of the year and various times of night. Mikayla, the first daughter of two brilliant Ph.D.'s, is one smart cookie. After viewing a couple of sky scenarios, she quickly learned to identify her newly mastered constellation across several starry configurations. Sharin was properly impressed and lavish with her praise. The two played "stars" for the better part of an hour, at which time Sharin prepared to depart.

"Wait!" Mikayla exclaimed as Sharin reached for her coat. "I'm going to use my ladle to scoop soup out of the sky!" She grabbed the ladle and flurried around her bedroom, lifting it to the ceiling and making scooping motions as if she were dipping soup from an enormous, upside down bowl. She then proceeded to the dining room, where she ladled the soup into imaginary bowls, naming a different kind of soup for each person she "served" (Grandma got "Tostito" soup). Sharin marveled at Mikayla's genius and lively imagination. Then she sat down at the dining room table to enjoy a bowlful of the most delicious pretend soup she had ever tasted.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sharin's animated tale about Mikayla, and heartily agreed with her observation of the child's precociousness. What I most marveled, however, was the magnificence of living in a world where soup can be scooped out of the sky. Where a ladle is a model of the Little Dipper one moment and a durn useful cooking utensil for serving imaginary soup from your bedroom ceiling the next. I wondered at what age the capacity for scooping ceiling soup got socialized out of me. Momentarily, I felt regretful as I tried to fathom how many things I do not see and how many possibilities I do not consider each day.

Suddenly, my regret vanished! Evaporated, one might say, at the exact moment I recalled the image of my Cheshire Cat grin floating bodiless over my cushion a couple of nights ago. "Oh yeah," I thought to myself, "I am cultivating Big Mind. The possibilities are endless. I will be scooping my own soup in no time!" What a relief. It would be a boring world, indeed, if a ladle could only be used as a model of the Little Dipper.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc