A MEDITATION ON IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND HEALINGIN CHILDREN SEPARATED FROM ORIGINAL FAMILYMillions of our world's children are forced through the curtain of separation from original family. Among the numerous causes are poverty, abuse, neglect, natural disaster, epidemic, immigration, incarceration, addiction, war, genocide, oppression, and child labor. While each experience is its own, all such separations cleave the child heart and mind into a common root wound of vacancy and drift.In the face of such woundedness, our children have the power for healing and growth waiting within them. Every aspect of their lives is affected by an often solitary quest for beauty and belonging. We who raise and serve these displaced young, through our embrace, are a vital factor in their ultimate healing.Jaiya John has shared time with thousands of uprooted children through his human relations work. Reflection Pond offers us his personal meditation, a looking glass for what these youth have whispered into his spirit. They have shared their need for reflection ponds: people, places, and experiences through which their own beauty and purpose are reflected back to them.Through allegory and parable, poetry and prose, Jaiya John draws from the natural world around us to unveil the magical inner life of children and youth. Here is a revelatory positioning of the human mirror. In its face we glimpse magnificence.