Spirituality and Children: Little Angels or Bad Seeds?
Sweetness and Light?
Children are often perceived as being in more immediate touch with our better natures of innocence and wonder – some would say nearer to God or the divine. For example, we have Jesus saying “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)
Poets sometimes make this connection too. For example, there’s William Wordsworth’s famous “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” Sample:
...not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home…
Wordsworth refers here to the idea that in infancy and childhood, something of God’s presence still remains with us in a way that fades as we enter youth and adulthood.
Rotten Apples?
All the same, it’s a platitude to observe: “Well, you know how cruel children can be.” At worst I think of the novel Lord of the Flies. Fiction maybe… but I have to say I’ve known groups of children I wouldn’t want to leave alone for five minutes, let alone unsupervised for years on an island!
Do kids come trailing clouds of glory or with a big chunk of the apple of original sin still stuck between their two front teeth?
Added April 29:
CARNIVAL OF HEALING (Shoot, I still can't make the script work for the "widgets...")
Reiki 4 Life
accepted my “Freudian Aroma Therapy” post of April 18, 2007 for the Carnival of Health. I appreciate Meredith’s willingness to post an alternative point of view on this subject.
Children are often perceived as being in more immediate touch with our better natures of innocence and wonder – some would say nearer to God or the divine. For example, we have Jesus saying “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)
Poets sometimes make this connection too. For example, there’s William Wordsworth’s famous “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” Sample:
...not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home…
Wordsworth refers here to the idea that in infancy and childhood, something of God’s presence still remains with us in a way that fades as we enter youth and adulthood.
Rotten Apples?
All the same, it’s a platitude to observe: “Well, you know how cruel children can be.” At worst I think of the novel Lord of the Flies. Fiction maybe… but I have to say I’ve known groups of children I wouldn’t want to leave alone for five minutes, let alone unsupervised for years on an island!
Do kids come trailing clouds of glory or with a big chunk of the apple of original sin still stuck between their two front teeth?
Added April 29:
CARNIVAL OF HEALING (Shoot, I still can't make the script work for the "widgets...")
Reiki 4 Life
accepted my “Freudian Aroma Therapy” post of April 18, 2007 for the Carnival of Health. I appreciate Meredith’s willingness to post an alternative point of view on this subject.
Posted by Paul at 3:41 PM Permalink
22 Comments:
as we grow older we take care of outer look and not the inner one...everyone is a child.....sometimes i start acting like a five yr old...and the happiness is just amazing...you care for only your skin and self...nothing else worries you except your immideate need....like animals ....
btw.have you read the alchemist by paulo coelho??
Simply...they are both.
ROSIE: Vishesh's comment also refers to this - the connection of infants/children to their animal nature or creatureliness. I wish I knew more about brain physiology. While it's true that babies are in a way baby animals, they're also human - with that immense cerebral cortex. So I bet they don't process the world much like a hamster or a cat. Not that you meant to imply this, I'm just onto that tangent from the reference of both of your comments to creatureliness...
From what I've seen of children, what you mention as their relatively low ability to hide their real feelings - that certainly rings true and could account for a lot of what adults find both most admirable and most objectionable in kids.
HAZZBUZZ: You write "It's true that children can be cruel, and from my experience this isn't something they are born with but it seems to come from insecurity or jealousy, and wanting to be in control and that seems to be reaction to something which has happened to them..." That's a generalized but pretty close summary of a good portion of what I think is involved in the origin of egotism too.
In my current studies, I recently completed two courses in guided imagery (GI), which focused on how we use images, such as the "child," to relate to ourselves and others. I learned a great deal from the GI exercises.
The child archetype is very powerful. You might say: that which is closest to birth is most free. Now, that is very powerful!
....the comment section is very lively too
VISHESH: Thank you, I'll definitely look at the blog. Unfortunately I physically can't read books and lack the productive hours in a day to do any substantial online reading. I haven't even read my own book aside from the writing/editing process!
N2: I like that way of outlining spiritual development.
it is a tough time to be parent these days... you have the responsibility to try to filter out the bad influences, and try to keep the innocence and beleif in goodness as long as possible.
Recently, a small child I was tending was kicking and screaming and yelling at the wind to stop blowing...which made me smile.
when i had my nursery school and would spend the day surrounded by 2 year olds, I would constantly have scenes like that...and it would remind me how silly I could behave at times...trowing my own tantrums...getting angry over things that were beyond my control, that i was pretty much acting like a spoiled little brat, etc.
I answered your comment...and it was my pleasure to include your posting. I am not a big fan of censorship, so long as the opposing opinion remains respectful, which you obviously were.
In any case, you might like to read Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss,Phd. sometime. I think perhaps, you would find it of interest regarding your medical issues.
It appears that I am writing a book here, so I shall stop.
Because to me, it means something different. Within ourselves, the child dwells, even into our old age. “The child” is a place or psychological state within us we go to, sometimes voluntarily, and sometimes when we’re activated by stimuli. I believe when we are in the child, we are often most open or receptive to the spirit. Isn’t Jesus just saying that if you can’t experience god as a “child” then there’s little chance you’ll experience it in any other psychological state?
REIKI: I love that "tell it like it is" quality in children too. Having worked with them for over twenty years, I have to say that while I fully recognize the selfish and cruel aspects of childhood, I found interacting regularly with children a major source of uplift and inspiration.
I welcome divergent views here too. Physically I can't handle hard copy anymore and have so little functional time in a day I'm not able to do any substantial online reading apart from keeping up with the blogs.
But if you have any specific criticism of the view I outline in my April 12 post - that's really where I state it best, I kind of sent you the post with the catchiest title to get your attention! - then I'd be happy to look at that.
DENNIS: Yes - that's my reading of it too.
So perhaps children trail clouds of the glory of all of us...
Human beings are very complex. Their development is very complex. The human being is a product of nature and nurture, or genetic potential combined with experience. Genetic potential leads to nothing without experience to activate it. And experience produces nothing without genetic potential being there in the first place. So you might have a bad seed in human beings to begin with, but it won't take root and grow unless experiences activate it. The same holds true for a good seed. It won't take root and grow unless experiences activate it.
I found this really long article at a feral children web site. The author gives an excellent explanation of the complexity involved in the development of the human brain and the role that experience plays. Hope this link works.
Childhood Experience and the Expression of Genetic Potential: What Childhood Neglect Tells Us About Nature and Nurture
As adults, I think what we long for spiritually and what we see in children is their spontaneity, their ability to live in the moment, their sense of wonderment, their candidness, and their simplicity. Probably there is more too. Anyway, the loss of these things or their diminishment in grownups seems to be the price we pay for growing up. But maybe we can recapture some of these things by hanging out with children.
As a counselor, I did notice a tendency for chidren with behavior problems to have parents who could have benefitted from parenting classes - but interestingly, this was not necessarily the case. I particularly remember one little boy who was an exceptional hellion (is that a word? Heard it but never saw it in print...) on the playground. But from everything we could see as a staff, his parents were doing everything right! Once in a while after a meeting after the parents had left one of would just shake out heads. How did that happen? That this pair of parents ended up with a child who behaved that way!
It made me wonder if in some cases there aren't genetic factors that are especially strong and likely to manifest under most environmental conditions that the child would ever encounter. Another weird one: my father's youngest brother, in a family of eight kids, was 21 years younger. He and my dad never saw much of each other. Yet as an adult, my uncle had speech patterns and even ways of gesturing that were remarkably like my father's - and that neither of their parents displayed. It was kind of spooky!
THURSDAYNEXT: I agree with you and SusieQ that there's something special in a positive way about children as a group - Susie refers to their wonderment, their candidness, and their simplicity, and to me those sound like three of the major attributes that stand out. And the examples we set do count for a whole lot. The kind of exception I mentioned to Susie and Pauline above was unusual.
SOULPEACE: That stands out for me too - that children haven't learned to hide things. Disingenuousness is a major quality, whether they're behaving well or badly. And even when they do try to lie or deceive, it's usually very to spot when they're young enough.
Some children come into the world very strong willed. Others are easy going and easy to raise. I don't think good parenting is able to solve every problem that crops up with children. Their environment includes many other influences: diet; health problems; exposure to undesirable chemicals; peer groups; and so on. But good parenting can help to assuage harmful influences in a child's life. I have heard it said that one of the jobs of parents is to undo the damage that the world does to their child.
And now to read your new post!
To be like a child, is to be closer to being our true self, a self that is not inpuned by the trappings of an adult.
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