"Three children peered through a steely fence. Their hands hung onto the holes and wires of the fence, clinging to them as they stared at me with their calls of 'Hello, hello.'"

Larissa Kaye Batten (LLbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.

I cried into the leaves of the Jamaica mountain, mourning the loss of the man I loved. My shoulders and heart crumpled with my heavy tears.

I stood to continue my walk, trying to keep up with the footfalls of God who led me on. I was alone with God, and I knew so very little about him. I was barely aware he existed at all, and I wasn't dying to know him.

I did not know God was already inside me.

We walked along, God and I, our feet lifting and letting go upon the grassy green of a Jamaican golf course. I had no awareness of where we would go. I didn't care. I simply needed to move on.

We traipsed on, until I heard a call from somewhere.

"Hello, hello," a child called. 

And then another. "Hello, hello," the other called.

Three children peered through a steely fence.

Their hands hung onto the holes and wires of the fence, clinging to them as they stared at me with their calls of "Hello, hello." They wore raggedy clothes, like Raggedy Ann's and Andy's. Clothes of another country, another time. Borrowed clothes, crusty and grimy with time and life.

"Hello, hello, come here," they called in the lilt of their accented English.

I walked toward the shack, watching the children and the goat of theirs that stood tied to a lone tree in their garden.

"We'll take you to the waterfall," they told me excitedly.

Hmmm. They were strangers to me. God put a gentle hand on my shoulder. I hesitated. God urged me forward.

"We'll show you where to go," the children said.

"Are you allowed to leave? Are you allowed to go?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, we'll take you there," they said happily. "We'll show you the trees and the animals and the berries. We'll show you what we eat."

I was humbled by their appearance, their childish happiness despite their lack of material anything at all.

They climbed under the fence and led me through their world.

"This berry, here, we collect this kind. We can eat it," one child said.

The smallest child did not talk at all. This child just hobbled along on her new feet, like a horse risen from her birth to learn the ways of walking.

"Do you go to school?" I asked, unable to imagine the children being anywhere other than atop their mystical mountain.

"When we have shoes," they explained. "We need shoes to go to school. We do not always have shoes."

I had shoes galore at home. I had so much money to buy more and more shoes. Sometimes these children could not go to school at all because they had outgrown or outworn their shoes.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked just as I would ask an American child. Did they have dreams, these children whose shoes determined whether they would even be educated?

"I want to be a doctor," one child said smartly. "Yes, I will be a doctor when I grow up," the child proclaimed.

I believed this child who spoke so convincingly, so wisely, so surely of his course. He was not laden down with material things, with too many shoes or too many dreams. His dream was simple. 

"We eat these too," another child said as she showed me another type of berry.

I asked more questions, and they answered. They were joyful. They were happy to carry me closer to God.

We did not speak of God. I hardly knew of God at all at the time. The children didn't need to speak of God. The children so obviously were of God.

"We have the one goat," they said. "The goat stays in our yard." 

The children led me farther along our path, to the waterfall. The waterfall was nothing spectacular. It was just water falling down a hill, its rush and hum splashing delightedly into a large urn of pool for whatever its use later would be.

We passed a man near the pool of water, but the man moved on. He knew not to disturb us. It was strange to see another human anywhere near us. We, these mystical children on their mystical mountain and I and God, we were alone and together, golden in the light of the day.

"I need to go back now," I told them eventually. "Will you take me back now?"

They had taken me to their waterfall; they would take me back to the shack where they lived. I had left my grieving behind for a day. My soul was touched by the love of these magical children playing atop their mystical mountain.

"Would you like shoes?" I said to the children. "I could send you shoes from America."

"Okay, okay," they exclaimed. "Will you send us shoes?"

Of course I will, I told them. I need to know the size of your feet. How will we measure them?

When we returned to the house, I asked for a pen. They did not have a pen. They had an old, crumbly pencil that needed to be sharpened with a knife. I used the pencil. 

I asked each child to line his or her feet up right against mine. Each time a child put his foot next to mine, I used the pencil to draw a line on my own shoe to mark the length of the foot. I marked thick lines of pencil so I would not lose them before I returned to America.

I said goodbye to the children, and I asked for their address so I could send the shoes. I said goodbye to the mystical mountain, not knowing how the mountain and its children would stay with me forever. I would not know until later how God and his children had touched me that day - how I would learn not to doubt a God who could stir my soul the way he did that day with the magic wand of his love.

I would return days later to the life I had left behind in America, to all the hurdles and obstacles of the material world and my ego within it.

I visited Walmart or K-Mart or some big American department store that was at least 100 times the size of the shack in which the angel children lived. I descended the long flight of stairs to find the shoe department. I wore my sneakers with the thick lines of pencil so I could figure out which shoes to buy to send to the children on the Mystical Mountain.

I bought the shoes, wrapped them in a box, addressed the package to three children of God in Jamaica, and sent them on their way.

I heard back from the children some time later to say they had received the shoes.

Then I received a letter from their mother, whom I had never met. "You met my children. You sent them shoes," she wrote to me. "I need your help. I don't know you. I need your help, though. We are all dying of AIDS here where we live. Someone I was with had it. I have it now. My children are sick too. I need help. Can you help me?"

I, who had mourned on their Mystical Mountain for the loss of a loved one to alcoholism, was being asked to help a family suffering their own great loss from the devastation of a deadly disease.

What could I do? I found information for them. I could do nothing else at the time. I did some research. I found information that would tell them what they needed to do. And one day I would pray for them, these children. 

This woman's children had taken me that day one step closer to God. I was one step closer to knowing the only answer ever lies wholly in God.

I did not know God well enough that day to know to pray for the love and grace he always has for his children. But today, thanks in part to the hearts of his Jamaican children, I know how God will take us all to the waterfall if we are willing to go.

The waterfall of life, the Mystical Mountain of our hearts, of our souls -- these gifts of God are flags on our path, signposts on our journey, cradles of God's love. 

We are not alone, not when we cry the tears of the waterfall, nor when we sink down into the blessed arms of the mountain.

God is everywhere. God is everyone. We all are one.

Amen.

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