...with an open heart

I was sitting reading this book with a small group of children... and one of the first things it tells you, if you want to see a fairy is "Open your eyes. Open your heart." and to listen.
One of the children asked me "How do you open your heart?"
I answered that I was not sure, and we wondered together the various possibilities of what it meant.

Yesterday we went to a new forest for us... legs are getting longer and stamina stronger, so we can walk further. This new forest has a different kind of calmness, an almost magical quality, especially when you think it is just a small forest in the middle of suburbia ... but there were differrent kinds of trees, each giving off its own atmosphere, especially when they were several together... there were fallen trees, the floor of the forest was covered in ferns and blueberries (sadly not many blueberries due to the hot dry summer... not that we should really complain about the gloriously warm summer).

There was time to look for fairies... which meant we found lots of other things... insects, seed filled spiderwebs, the wetness of the ferns as we walked through them, small openings that could be fairy doors...

We also listened... to the wind through the trees... what was it saying to us... the children could translate "welcome to the forest... come and play"...

I asked the child who had wondered about how to "open your heart" if she could think of a way of opening her heart to the forest... to be able to hear the forest... and this is what she did...

She listened to the forest... she told me she could hear it talking... she could hear the fairies... and they are apparently as excited about the International Fairy Tea Party as we are...