It is asked to a child: “Draw a flower!” It is given paper and pencil. The child sits in the other corner of the room where there is no one else.

After some time the paper is full of lines. Some in one direction, others in other directions. Some thicker, others lighter. Some easier, others more difficult.

The child has put so much strength I some lines that the paper almost did not make it. Others were so delicate that only the weight of the pencil was too much.

Later the child came to show these lines to the people: a flower! The people do not think these lines are similar to the ones of a flower!

However the word flower walked inside the child, from head to heart and from heart to head looking for the lines with which the flower is made. And the child has put on the paper some of these lines, or all of them.

Perhaps she had put them out of their places, but, those were the lines with which God makes a flower!

*   *   *

The beautiful text of Almada Negreiros – Portuguese poet and plastic artist – could lead us to many reflections.

The first leads us through the paths of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his charming little prince, when shows us the difficulty that the adult soul has to understand the infant world (as if had never transited through childhood).

The aviator of Saint-Exupéry, when child, could not be understood in his ostentatious drawings. They were too complex for the adults…

Another facet of the little poem leads us to think about the powers of our soul and of how we have, within us, all the lines to draw whatever we wish.

The seeds of perfection, of the virtues of the soul, are all with us since we were created, looking for the time to be developed.

As well as the lines drawn by the child, during the first moments seem unintelligible for us, they are the first movements of the human being toward happiness.

The traces will get organized with the time, with the various incarnations, with the learnings, and our flower on the paper will become prettier and closer to the original figure created by God.

The perfection of the flower that is drawn will never be the same as the Divine blooming, because the Spirit achieves only a relative perfection.

However, the flower drawn by men will be equally beautiful after the successive experiences in flesh.

*   *   *

We live to organize the traces of our intimacy, trying to give them harmonic aspects, inspired and guided by the Divine laws.

Education has never been an act of putting something inside us, and yes to put out, developing potential.

The etymology of the word education shows us the terms: ex, which means to outside, followed by the expression ducere, which is understood by guide, conduct, lead.

Thus, to educate means to lead, guide, withdraw from within us something that is already there, embryonic.

Let us look within, take care of ourselves, invest our time in the Spiritual evolution and we will see these traces dancing through the screens of the world producing great beauties.

We have with us the seeds of all virtues, of all the flowers of our soul.

Spiritist Moment Team with quotation from the text A flor, from the
book A invenção do dia claro, from Jose Sobral de Almada Negreiros,
Published House Assirio & Alvim.
June 5.2013.