Parenting inspiration

I read this during Shabbat services this weekend, and it really spoke to me; not about my relationship with God, as I believe it was intended, but about helicopter parenting.  It's okay to let the kids be adventurous and go off on their own and not be by their side. I'd been thinking about it all that morning, and here was a prayer I've read countless times, that really hit me full-force with its beauty.


What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

       So building fires
       requires attention
       to the spaces in between,
       as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of fuel
together, that make the fire possible.

        We only need to lay a log
        lightly from time to time.
        A fire grows
        simply because the space is there,
        with openings in which the flame
        that knows just how it wants to
        burn
        can find its way.


(Judy Brown, Mishkan Tefillah 225)