If your faith in the existence of the soul has never faltered; if your understanding of sacredness of every human life and every moment of that life has never been stronger; and if your belief that the body is God's temple has always been complete, you may think to yourself, Why has it been necessary to prove the existence of the soul?  Why has the author taken the time to begin a multi-layered, book-long argument with the idea that the soul and body are one? You might think, I already know my children and all beings are children of God, so why has the author written of a deep coherence between religion and science regarding the soul of the child?

When I watched my wife get strapped up to the neuro-electrical monitors in our child's birth room, I was a young, excited man seeking to be fully present to the occasion, my emotions bounding between fear ("Will Gail and the baby be all right?") and joy ("There's never been a moment like this!").  I followed orders, helped Gail breathe, got out of the way during the "transition" phase, when she became angry, stayed as close as possible through all phases, and when it was time, cut Gabrielle's umbilical cord.

I saw a little girl's body come out of Gail's adult body.  I did not, except perhaps in the most unconscious sense, see a soul.  At some deep unconscious level I certainly must have experienced my child as light itself, for my joy, like a luminescense inside me, welled up into tears as I held her.  I know Gail's did too, as did the joy of others present, from a nurse who had befriended us, to our children's godmother and godfather.

Yet I did not realize the light consciously, and even more troubling to me, I did not---until the conversation at Great-grandma's nursing home---realize the divinity, the actual soul of my two children, in every moment of their lives.  I had, for most of the days and nights of their lives, lots else to do.  I knew my children as mainly bodies to be transported to the bus, to school, to friends' houses, to sports activities; I had known my children as economic interns that I must train to "make it in the world."  When I thought of them as souls, it was in regard to getting them to Sunday school, or providing them with "time in nature," or time in character development experiences.  I had not integrated a sense of soul into my own children's lives, even despite the fact that I am a man of religion.

Am I unsual?  Don't most of us fall into this trap?  Don't we miss the soul of our spouse, our coworkers, our friends, our children?  We tend to.  We are focused on other things.

...We need to see the trusth that is right before us:  Our children are not just "kids"---they are light itself.

We think of our children as "kids who are doing sports."...I hope you'll come to think of their sports activity as divine play.

We think of our children as "going to school to get good grades."  I hope you'll soon think of your children's learning as their active engagement in knowing their own and the world's divinity.

In a culture as busy and competitive as ours, we think of our children as success objects, pushing them to "succeed at all costs."  I hope you'll join me in thinking more than perhaps you have about their divine destiny as souls, and their inherent right to live a life of meaning, spiritual purpose, and mission.

We think of our children as "ours."  What if we thought of them as long-standing souls, whom we have only borrowed for a few years, as light is borrowed, not owned?

We think of our children as bodies because so much of what we must do for them involves, from the first day of life, care of their bodies.  I hope you'll soon think of your children, yourself, and all around you as light itself, which needs to be cared for not only as body but also as soul.

Won't these kinds of rethinking lead us to realize how much more we can do to make children's lives holy, and our own lives more meaningful?