Finishing School

We had only begun to learn, only started

to see the patterns to which our Teacher
pointed our infant attention. And we
thought it was enough. In our juvenile
arrogance, we mistook the part –
the smallest of parts – for the whole,
spurned our Teacher, assumed we could
do better than her billions of years' experience,
declared ourselves her lords and masters, and
subjected her to our crude machinations.

Perhaps she anticipated this. Perhaps she
knew this was the risk she ran in undertaking
to educate us. Perhaps that is why she set so
many reserves aside – to let us play out the
fantasies of our ungovernable adolescence,
before recovering the wonder of childhood
and the promise of sober co-creation as adults.

It must've been hard, gambling on us like that.
It must be hard still, knowing that the game is
far from over, that she – we – may lose the bet.
It remains to be seen whether we will submit
ourselves to loving tutelage, whether we will
return to our Teacher, as penitent prodigals,
and complete our courses of instruction.