Monday, March 13, 2017

Children

Stratford Caldecott maintains that there is something infinite about childhood.  He explains:

"The pure gaze of innocence is one that does not secretly look for what can be got out of something or someone.  It sees things as they are in their own right.  The energy behind the gaze is not diverted by a variety of other passions.  When a baby wants something, it wants that thing completely, as anyone who has witnessed a tantrum must see.  Thus the child lives each moment more intensely than those who have grown old in sin.  His eyes are clearer, his ears keener, his energy stronger.  He lives in a universe that seems to go on forever, for he has not had the experience of many winters and summers, and of the flickering parade of birthdays through the years.  He has no yardstick against which to measure his life.  This intensity of experience is partly a function of the way memory and imagination work.  It is the memory of time that makes us old; remembering eternity makes us young again." (Caldecott, Beauty of the Word)

Everytime you see a thing or a person as a gift in itself, you are becoming young again and looking on the world as a child.  And everytime you see God as a gift in himself, you are becoming a child of God again - "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it" (Mark 10:15)

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