Sheltered

The next hue-man allegory that arose in my conscious mind is the concept of being ‘sheltered.’ Recently, having been working with children ages 3 through 5, I began reflecting on this term, wondering if it was healthy to shelter a child from social chaos. I then wondered what being sheltered could mean in the fullness of things, in its multi-dimensional aspects. Shelter often denotes a place of refuge. In a time of need we can find shelter. We can be sheltered from a storm. But, we can also be sheltered from the mass mind. We can then be sheltered in a smaller mindset or in the sanctuary of a religious institute.

Sheltered under the one-sided belief systems that exist in the world is where my reflectives began to take a more serious focus. Although being sheltered under the shadow of the wing of the Almighty is extremely comforting doctrine, I am left to question why it doesn’t seem to apply to all believers. Why do kind hearted, innocent, lambs wind up getting raped, being in car accidents where 46 bones are broken, or fervent believers left in poverty and struggling to find a loaf of bread for their family. When these things happen, it is explained away by terms like: undeserving, unworthy, unready, imperfect. These types of explanations are fine for attempting to keep one’s psychological well-being intact when rejected by a loving god, but shelter takes on a much different tone then protection when it comes to being boxed in for only temporary survival or becoming limited in scope by the shelter of a belief system. Where is the vastness of the greater when being shrouded by the smaller.

What happens to those who peek out of the small shelters of temporality they were initially protected by and make those first steps into the greater world, the greater mind, the greater experience? Are they lost and frightened? Are they confused and unequipped in macrocosmic adaptation? Does the small child really grow to conform into the greater world schema or into another sheltered existence? Can any one hue-man being see the whole and survive? Are hue-man’s shattered by the storms of cosmic flux too great for their ability to contain? Does the light truly shatter the vessels?

Does an umbrella solve the conundrum?