A TALK OF BABIES ABOUT MOTHER
Although it’s increasingly rare, but yet there are in our way life such meetings with people who translate their lack of faith in the infinite purity and light of the spiritual world. Every time during a conversation with them, you have to subside, trying to find the words in your soul that would have opened for them the inexhaustible riches of the Faith. As a gift for all those who are just on the way to the realization of their soul immortality This parable about THE BABIES IN THE WOMB.
“Two twin-embryo in the womb debate: is there life after birth. Unbeliever baby asks believer one: “Do you believe in life after birth?”
— Believer baby: “Yes, of course. I am sure that there is life after birth. We are here in order to become strong enough and ready for what lies ahead, beyond our lives here.”
— Unbeliever: “This is nonsense! There is no life after birth can be! Can you imagine what kind of life would look like?
— Believer: “I do not know exactly, but I believe that there will be interesting and good. It seems to me that we are very much waited and loved there. I am sure that after delivery we will see the wonderful world that would be more light, and that we may walk by ourselves and eat with our mouth.”
—Unbeliever: “With your mouth?”
— Believer: “Yes, I’m sure it’s possible. Everything will be just a little bit different. It is possible to imagine, but I can’t explain that. I just feel it. What a pity that you do not feel. I was so happy at the thought of a wonderful life after birth.”
— Unbeliever: “But there still no one has ever come back! How can you know that? You need to stop talking nonsense and accept the fact that life finishes with childbirth. In general, life – is one thing with a lot of suffering in the dark.”
— Believer: “No, it is not so! I do not know exactly how it will look our life after delivery, but in any case, we will see Mama, and she will take care of us.”
— Unbeliever, “Mom? Do you believe in Mom? And where is she located? How does she look? Have somebody seen her? What is the evidence?”
— Believer: “I can not explain you, but I feel she is everywhere around us, we dwell in her, and thanks to her move and live without her we simply can not exist. She is our world today. With every movement I guess her presence. She is All-Blessed, the Almighty unknown goodness.”
— Unbeliever: “Complete nonsense! Nobody has ever seen any mother, and therefore it is clear that she is not there. It’s all fiction of visionaries.”
— Believer: “You know, when everything calms down, you can hear and feel how she caresses our world. What tenderness spreads around! Everything inside me starts to exult with joy and love for all our world spreads a warm stream. I firmly believe that our real life begins only after birth. And you? Don’t you still believe?”
Why are some people born with faith, others come to it in the way of their life, and some never reach it?
MONOLOG OF A FATHER
This story Livingston Larned became extremely popular all over the world since it was published in his book by Dale Carnegie. It was translated into many languages and reprinted by hundreds of books and thousands of bloggers was cited. If you – are a father or just going to become – be sure to read! Unfortunately, many of us could write similar stories of our lives with the children. The main thing that we all have occurred earlier and faster insight. A comprehension of the enormity of wrong and manner of dealing with the purest child’s spirit led to a change in our entire life.
“Listen, son. I utter these words while you are sleeping; your little hand is under the cheek, and curly blond hair matted on your forehead is damp. I sneaked alone into your room. A few minutes ago, when I was sitting in the library reading the newspaper, I was swept over a heavy wave of remorse. I have come to your bedside with a consciousness of guilt.
That’s what I was thinking, son: I spread my bad mood on you. I scolded you when you were getting dressed to go to school, because you just touched your face with a wet towel. I scolded you for what you were not cleaning shoes. I angrily shouted at you when you threw something of your clothes on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too, for you. You spilled tea. You gulp your food. You put your elbows on the table. You’re too thickly spread butter on bread. And then, when you went to play, and I was in a hurry on the train, you turned and waved a hand and called out, “Goodbye, Daddy!”- I frowned and replied: “strife shoulders”!
Then, at the end of the day, it all started again. Walking on the way home, I noticed you when you were on your knees playing marbles. There we holes on your stockings. I humiliated you before your friends, forcing to go home ahead of me. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them on your own money, you would be more accurate! Imagine only son, all this your father was saying!
Remember how you went then into the library, where I read, – timidly, with pain in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the fact that I was prevented, you hesitated at the door. “What do you need?” – I asked sharply.
You did not say anything, but abruptly rushed up to me, you put your arm around my neck and kissed. Your hand, gripped me with the love that God has put in your heart and which even my dismissive attitude could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering feet, up the stairs.
Now, son, soon after that my paper slipped from my hands, and I was captured by the terrible, sickening fear. What did habit do to me? The habit of finding fault, scold – this was my reward to you for the fact that you’re a little boy. One can not say that I did not love you, the thing is that I expected too much of youth and measuring you with yardstick of my own age.
And there is so much healthy, beautiful and sincere in your character. Your little heart is as big as the dawn over the distant hills. This was manifested in your spontaneous impulse, when you rushed to me to kiss me before you go to sleep. Nothing else has no value today, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, ashamed, I stood my knees in front of you!
This is weak redemption. I know you would not understand these things if I told you all this when you wake up. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I’ll be friends with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when it’d be ready to break the word irritated. I will constantly repeat the mantra: “He’s only a boy, little boy!”
I’m afraid I have visualized you as the adult male. But now, when I see you, son, tired of cowering in your cot, I see that you are still a child. Once yesterday, you were on your mother’s arms and lay your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.”
DISAPPEARENCE OF CHILDHOOD
We want to introduce you an article from the American Journal supporting this idea.
On the next few pages, I will make the frightening assumption. I justify that our new media environment – with the TV in the center – leads to rapid disappearance of childhoods, childhood, may not live to see the end of this century, and that this situation is a social catastrophe of the highest order. I stop, when presenting my case, because I do not know the solution. This does not mean that there is no solution; It means only that the limit of my imagination does not extend beyond the essence of the problem.
Childhood is a social artifact, not a biological category. Our genes do not contain clear instructions about who is a child and who is not, and the laws of survival do not require the differences between the adult world and the child world. In fact, if we consider that the word “child” refers to a special class of people aged somewhere between 7 and, say, 17 years, requiring special forms of treatment and protection, and are considered to be qualitatively different from adults – in this case, there are plenty of evidence to suggest that children there are less than 400 years. Moreover, if we use the word “child” in the sense as understood by the average North American, the childhood is of a little more than 150 years. You can take a small example: the custom of celebrating the day of birth of the child did not exist in America during the most of the XVIII century, and counting of the exact age of the child has a relatively recent cultural tradition, aged not more than two hundred years.
A more important example: even in 1890, the United States only 7% of the population aged 14 to 17 years visited the school. Together with many more young, the other 93% worked at adult work – some from sunrise to sunset – in all our major cities.
But it would be a mistake to take social facts for social ideas. The idea of childhood – one of the great inventions of the Renaissance, perhaps the most humane one. Along with science, a nation-state, religious freedom, childhood as a social principle, as a psychological condition appeared in the XVI century. Until that time, children age 6 or 7 years were simply not treated as fundamentally different from adults. The language of children, manner of dress, sports, labor and legal rights were the same as in adults.
It was recognized, of course, that children were less than adults, but this fact didn’t not elevate them to some special status; precisely that there were no special institutions for looking after children. Until the XVI century, for example, there were no books on childcare and even in general books on the maternal role of women. Children always presented at the funeral procession, because no one had reason to think, how to isolate them from death. Also, no one kept the child images, regardless of whether he lived to adulthood, or died in infancy.
Also, until the XVII century, there is no reference to the existence of the child’s speech or jargon, after – they are in abound. If you have ever seen a child’s image of XIII or XIV centuries, you must have noticed that they are depicted as small adults. In addition to growth, they are deprived of all the details that we associate with childhood, and they have never shown separately from adults. Such pictures are completely accurate representation of the psychological and social perception of children up to the XVI century. . This is how the historian Jh. H. Plum puts it: “There was not a single child in the world. The children and adults had the same games, toys, fairy tales. They lived together, never separately”.
In the excellent book about the XIV century “Distant Mirror Barbara Tachman summarized it in this way: “If children lived up to 7 years, there started their conscious lives more or less like little adults. Childhood was ended on this.” It’s hard to say why things were so. At first, Miss Tachman shows, that most children do not survive; their mortality rate was very high, up to the end of the XIV century. Children not even mentioned in the wills – an indication that the adults did not assume that children would live long enough. Of course, the adults did not have the emotional attachment to the children what we consider normal today. Besides children treated primarily as a means of production. Adults were more interested in their performance than character or intelligence. But I believe that the main reason for the lack of the idea of childhood was in the communication environment of the medieval world. That means, because the most people could not read, and they did not need to be able to read, the child becomes an adult – absolutely full adult – as soon as they learned to speak. Since all important social transactions include oral face to face communication, the ability to properly speak and listen – usually achieved by 7 years – was the border between infancy and adulthood. Therefore, the Catholic Church pointed to 7 years as the age at which a person can determine the difference between right and wrong, the age of reason. Therefore, children with adults were hung for theft and murder. And so in the Middle Ages there was no such thing as primary education, since where biology determines the competence of communication, there was no need for such education. An intermediate stage between the infant and the adult did not exist because there was no need for such a step. Until the middle of the XV century.
At this moment, there was an extraordinary event, which not only changed the religious, economic and political picture in Europe, but also created our modern idea of childhood. Of course, I mean the invention of the printing press. And as some of you will think after a few minutes that I attach too much importance to television, it is worth mentioning that in 1450, no one had any idea of how powerful the influence of the printing press would have on our society. When Gutenberg announced that he could produce the book, as he put it, “without the help of a stylus or pen, but through the wonder of conformity, proportion and harmony of punches and dies,” he did not realize that his invention would undermine the authority of the Catholic Church. However, as a result of less than 80 years later, Martin Luther argued that if the Word of God was in every house, the Christians do not need papacy to interpret it for them. Just Gutenberg did not know that his invention will create a new class of people – namely, children.
To realize what reading meant two centuries after Gutenberg’s invention, consider the case of two people – one named William, another – Paul. In 1605, they tried to break into and rob the house in Sussex. They were caught and convicted. This is what is literally said in the verdict, the magistrate appointed to sit on “Condemned William doesn’t read, let him be hanged. Condemned Paul reads, let him be chopped off.” Paul’s punishment was not merciful, it meant that he had been cut off the thumbs on his hands. But, in contrast to William, he has survived, as falling within the so-called “Spiritual benefit”, which meant that he could cope with the task to read one sentence from the English version of the Bible. And this one’s ability, according to English law in the XVII century, was the reason enough to rescue him from the gallows. I think the reader will agree with me if I say that of all the proposals how to motivate people to learn to read, nothing compares to the method of the XVII century in England. Incidentally, of the 203 persons who have committed crimes punishable by hanging, in Norwich in 1644, about half come under the “spiritual benefit”, which implies that England, at least, has produced the most literate criminals in the world.
But of course, it was not the only one. As I suggested, childhood was a scion of literacy. And it happened because in less than 100 years after the invention of the printing press, European culture became the culture of reading, ie, the concept of adulthood has been overridden. Man could not become an adult, if you could not read. To live with God, man obviously wanted to read the Bible. To know the literature, it was necessary to read the stories and personal essays – literary forms entirely by the printing press. Our earliest writers – for example, Richardson and Defoe were themselves publishers, Sir Thomas More was working very closely with the publisher to create what could be called our first science fiction story – his “Utopia”. Of course, to study science, it was necessary to be able to read, but the beginning of the XVII century, you can read scientific texts in their native language. “Promoting of knowledge” Sir Francis Bacon, published in 1605, was the first scientific treatise, which the Englishman could read in English. At the same time, Europeans reopened what Plato knew about learning to read – that it is best to do at an early age. Because reading is among other things an unconscious reflex, as well as recognition of the act of reading habit should be formed at a time when the brain is still involved in the development of spoken language. An adult who is learning to read after his oral vocabulary formed, rarely (if ever) can read fluently.
In the XVI century. it started to mean that the young need to be separated from the others for learning to read, that is, learning how to be an adult. Before the printing press, the children became adults, learning to say, for what all people are programmed biologically. After the printing press, the children had to earn adulthood, learning reading and writing, what people do not biologically programmed. This meant the need for the establishment of schools. In the Middle Ages there was no such thing as a primary education. For example in England in 1480, there were 34 schools. By 1660 there were more than 450 – one for every 12 square miles. With the founding of schools, young inevitably came to be regarded as a special class of people whose mind and character are qualitatively different from adults. Since the school was designed as preparation of literate adults, the young began to perceive not as small adults but as something completely different – as immature adults. Schooling has become identified with the special nature of childhood. Childhood, in its turn, was determined by school attendance, and the word “disciple” has become synonymous with the word “child”.
I believe that all this is now coming to an end, at least in the United States. And it is because our communications environment again undergoes a radical change, this time – due to the electronic media, especially television. Television has transforming power of at least not less one than that of the printing press and perhaps similar force of the alphabet. And I am convinced that with the help of other media such as radio, film and sound recording, television has the power to bring us to the end of childhood.
Here is how the transformation operates. At the beginning – television was not initially linguistic, it presents information primarily in the form of visual images. Although human speech is heard on television, and sometimes assumes importance, the most of the people are watching television. And they watch quickly replaced visual images – up to 1,200 scenes per hour. The average length of the stage – 3.5 seconds, in advertising – 2.5 seconds. It requires very little analytical decoding. In America watching TV – it’s almost a pure pattern recognition. I say that the symbolic form of television does not require any special instruction or training. In America, TV viewing starts at about 1.5 years, and to 3 years, children begin to understand and respond to TV images. They have favorite characters, they sing tunes and they ask for products that they see in advertising. To view the TV does not require any training, it does not require primer analogue. Watching television does not require any skills and does not produce any skills. That is why there is no such thing as a TV extra classes. And that’s why you do not see the television better today than 5 or 10 years ago. And so in reality there is no such thing as a children’s TV program.
Everything for everyone. As for the symbolic form, “Dynasty” is as complex or simple as “Sesame Street.” Unlike books, which vary greatly in the lexical and syntactic complexity, and that can be built with respect to the reader’s abilities, television is indifferent to the information in an accessible form. And that’s why adults and children tend to watch the same program. Just in case if someone thinks that adults and children are watching TV at least at different times, I can add that according to the book by Frank Mankievints on TV “Remote Control”, about 2 million American children watch TV every day, all year round between 23:30 and 2:00.
I say that television erases the boundary between childhood and adult life in two ways: it does not require training to understand its shape, and it does not divide the audience. Therefore, it sends the same information to everyone at the same time, regardless of age, gender, level of education, or working conditions.
We can say that the main difference between an adult and a child is that the adult knows about some aspects of life – its mysteries, contradictions, brutality, tragedy – about which it is believed that their children better not to know. While the children are moving in the direction of the adult world, we gradually discover these secrets to them in ways to which they are ready in our opinion. Therefore, there is such a thing as children’s literature. But television makes this situation quite impossible. Since the TV is working almost around the clock, it requires constant innovation and interesting information to keep the audience. This means that all adult secrets – social, sexual, physical, and others – are opened. Television makes the entire culture to get out of the closet, cancels all taboos. Incest, divorce, promiscuity, corruption, adultery, sadism – all this is now just the theme for a particular TV show. And of course, along the way they lose their role of exclusively adult secrets.
A few years ago, I was watching the program “Show of Vidal Sassoon” (Now it’s mercifully removed), I came across quintessence example of a thing I am talking about. Vidal Sassoon – is a well-known hairdresser; his show is a mix of beauty tips to restore, diets, health tracking, and popular psychology. At the end of one segment of the show the music started, and Sassoon had the following to say: “Stay with us. We’ll be back with a stunning new diet, and then – we briefly stay on incest.”
Television is cruel in showing and simplification of all personal and shameful things. Items for discussion are confessional booth and receiving a psychiatrist now are available to the public. In fact, soon enough, we and our children will get an opportunity to see the first commercial television experiments with nudity, which may not shock anyone, as commercials for many years, we are an easy form of pornography, such as advertising designer jeans. As for the commercials – for the first 20 years of the life of a young American sees them as 1 million times – they also make their contribution to the opening of the secrets that were once adult area, everything from vaginal sprays to life insurance and causes of marital conflict. And we should not omit the TV news, this strange entertainment which every day supplies young people with vivid images of errors and even madness of adults.
As a consequence, it is impossible to keep the innocence of childhood, so the children disappeared from television. Have you noticed that all the children in the TV shows are shown as small adults, in the style of paintings XIII-XIV centuries? Watch any soap opera, family shows or sitcoms, and I think you’ll see children whose language, clothing, sexuality and interests are no different from adults in the same TV show.
And at the same time, although the TV starts to erase the traditional concept of childhood, it would be a mistake to assume that it plunges us into the adult world. Rather, it uses the material of the adult world as a basis for the design of a completely new type of personality. We can call this person an adult child. For reasons that are partly related to the TV’s ability to reach all, in part to the availability of its symbolic form and partly because of its commercial foundations, television encourages many habits that we associate with childhood – such as obsessive desire of immediate gratification, insufficient account of the consequences, obsession with consumption. Television seems to prefer a population consisting of 3 age groups: on the one hand there is infancy, the other – there is old age, and between them – there is a group of indeterminate age, where everyone between 20 and 30 years, and they remain in this state until the coming pension.
In this regard, I recall the television advertising of hand lotion. Or maybe it was a cosmetic soap. They show us the mother and daughter, and then they asked to guess who is who. I find it lifting the sociological evidence, because it tells us that our culture is considered to be desirable that the mother did not look older than her daughter, or her daughter did not look younger mother. Does it mean that childhood is gone, or that the adult world is gone – we are talking about the same phenomenon, because if there is no clear concept of what it means to be an adult, can not be a clear concept of what it means to be a child.
No matter how you want to describe the transformation taking place, it is clear that the behavior, habits, desires and even the appearance of adults and children have become indistinguishable. Now there is almost no difference between adults and children, crime and punishment in many states are identical. Note: between 1950 and 1985 growth of what the FBI calls a “serious crime” in the age group of 15 years exceeded 11,000%! Also it differs very little clothing. Children’s clothing industry has experienced nearly a revolution over the last 15 years, so that now no longer exists what we used to be clearly perceived as baby clothes. 11-year-old wear triplets at a party in honor of the birth, 61-year-olds wear jeans to a party in honor of the birthday. 12-year-old girl walking in high heels, 52-year-old men wear sneakers. On the streets of New York and Chicago one can see young adult women in white socks and in Mary Janes simulations, again, miniskirts, these most obvious and embarrassing examples of adults imitating children’s clothing. Another case: children’s games, once so impressive and varied and so categorically unsuitable for adults, are fast disappearing. Minor League Baseball and football Peavy, for example, not only is under adult supervision, but they also repeat the organization and emotional style of big sports leagues. Fast food, once suitable only for flawless gums and iron stomachs of young people, are now a common thing for adults. Already forgotten that adults supposed to have a more delicate taste to the food than children; advertising McDonald’s and Burger King shows that this difference is more important. The language of children and adults are also transformed, so that, for example, the idea that there are words that adults should not say in front of the children, now seems just absurd. With such a merciless discoverer of secrets as television, secrets of the language is difficult to keep, and for me it is conceivable that in the near future we will return to the situation of XIII-XIV centuries, when no words were considered unsuitable for children’s ears.
Of course, with the help of modern contraceptives, sexual appetites, both of adults and children can be satisfied without serious restrictions and a deep understanding of their meaning. Here TV played a huge role, as it does not only keep the entire population in a state of high arousal, but focuses on the satisfaction of sexual egalitarianism: Sex is transformed into a product available to all – for example, rinse for mouth or underarm deodorant. I left to mention the growing movement for to give full legal rights to children, more or less as adults. The emphasis of this movement – which, for example, contrasted violently training – in the opinion that what was considered a privileged status of children, in fact, the harassment that only keeps them from full participation in society.
In short, our culture offers less reason for childhood opportunities. I am not so narrow-minded to think that only TV is responsible for this transformation. Other factors are – the decline of the family, loss of a sense of roots – the 40 million Americans change their place of residence every year – and impairing (through technology) the importance of working adults. But I believe that television creates a communication context that promotes the idea that childhood is neither desirable nor necessary; in fact, we do not need children.
Speaking about the end of childhood, of course, I was not talking about the physical disappearance of children. But actually, it occurs too. Fertility falls in North America – for a decade – so all over the country are closing schools. This brings me to the final characteristics of television, you want to mention. The idea implies a vision of the future of children. They are living message that we send in time, which will not see. But television can convey a sense of the future, or if it has a value of the past. This media concentrated on the present, a carrier with speed of light. All that we see on television, there is happening now. TV Grammar has no analogues of past and future tenses in the language. It disproportionately increases the present and transforms children’s desire of immediate gratification in life style. We come to what Christopher Lasch calls “the culture of narcissism” – no future without children, all hovered somewhere between 20 and 30 years.
As I said at the beginning, I believe that the described accident – partly because I appreciate the charm, the unusual, the compliance and the innocence of childhood, in part because I think that people need to stay children before they become adults. Otherwise, they will stay television older children for whole life, without a sense of belonging, incapable of long-term relationships, without respect to the limits and without a sense of the future. But most importantly, I think it’s a disaster, because as television culture erases the line between a child and an adult, erases social secrets, undermining the concept of the future and the value restrictions and discipline, we seem to be going to move back to the medieval perception from which we were liberated by literacy.
But I do not want to end on such a desperate note. Instead, let me offer a perspective that may be slightly soothe. In V century BC Athens was on the verge of transformation from oral to written culture. But the great Athenian teacher Socrates feared literature and ridiculed it. As we know, Socrates did not write books, and if not Plato and Xenophon (who wrote), we would hardly know anything about him. In one of his longest dialogues entitled “Faedrus” Socrates argues that the spoken word is best suited to express serious ideas, the beautiful poetry and true virtue. And he argues that writing would undermine the ability of memorization, a dialectical process and the concept of privacy. In all of these prophecies he was right. But he did not see what his pupil Plato saw – namely, that the script will generate stunning new ways to use intelligence. Thus, Socrates was right, but his vision was limited. Without the slightest intention of making unjustified comparisons, let me conclude with the following: despite the fact that I believe the picture described accurate, I sincerely hope that my vision is limited, as the vision of Socrates, and that may result in the TV age blessing. But I doubt it.
Memory of childhood to help adults
Children grow up in a hurry, and the adults later feel nostalgic for childhood. It is not just the desire to once again become a child, unscrew the clock. All pain of longing for childhood is that they madly want without losing adulthood, regain the world as they saw and felt it, while being a child. This attraction is not flawed, it is salutary. For if we don’t become children, we couldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven. Childhood Memory reminds us what we should be.
What do we remember from the childhood? The world is big, bright, light. The day is long, a lot of thing happen and everything is interesting. The next day will be a new one, different from the previous one. Time pours strength into us: we have learned, we can more and more. It seems that soon we will be able to fulfill our every desire. World is supple and well disposed to us. We are willing to forgive and love. We have friends with whom we are united by the school and the yard, and it’s halfway around the world. We trust people and believe in ourselves. As a child, it’s just – we are simple and not stained with mud.
But we grow up, and paints fade. Independence, to which we have sought, has taken the burden on our shoulders. Day reduced. There is no time to do things. The desired and the interesting things odd. In this the interesting things melt and shrink before our eyes. New is not enough, it is not of the depth, as in childhood, and is so not breathtaking. Days become similar to one another. There born boredom, and boredom arises from an awareness of depression. We are complex, it’s difficult for us to understand each other, even harder to understand the other. We shared something, and it is very difficult to find something that can be combined. We do not trust each other all the time and find what strengthens this unbelief. We do not trust ourselves, and rightly so: our weaknesses took effect on us. Every year it’s more and more difficult for us to get to the top of it, to go beyond the habits and make the act, to accomplish the feat.
The world that we have created around us is angry and elasticity – every effort it meets with a new blow. Even if at first you hold a strike, then you fall hands within the time. It seems that there would be nothing light in life, except in some places and, mainly, in trivialities.
Adult joyless existence (the inheritance of “drudge”) is opposed to our consciousness carefree childhood. We feel sick and do not believe in the doctor’s art. It is not exceptional, but ordinary, everyday state. This state is of the majority.
It is regular. It’s also a natural feeling and abnormalities of our damaged being. The thing, under the pressure of which our soul is weak, there calles a sin. And this sin – is not the totality of our unjust cases in which it is possible to repent and thus ease the soul. It – is gravity of the breach of harmony of our inner constitution, the severity of life not in God. There is no man who lives and does not sin. “Sin, like breathing” – the sin penetrates into every pore of our lives, affects in small things, binds the force of habit.
Such is the state of man after the fall. And you must be the soul of a saint, without the grace it dies of hunger as the body without food. Spiritual hunger of graceless life afflicts us. We feel bad, but that’s good. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and they shall be filled.” “Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted.” What we have is bad, what we want spiritually is a small but genuine atonement for our sins. Those who do not suffer on earth, will suffer after the death. But the main thing: the pain of the soul forces to seek refuge. The more we are aware of our being frustrated, the more it encourages us to look for opportunities to re-create its original integrity. Knowing that light in our darkness, and appealing to the true light, we witness that they loved the darkness more than the light, and because we – are not the children of darkness, but the Sons of Light.
Status of childhood – is a standing out the world of sin –it’s impossible to return, of course. Changes that generates sin in us, are irreversible, and even if the grace of God will blot out our sins, remains temptation of sin, the memory of our being perfect – a distortion of the original light plan. And yet, not being able to completely move into the color being (that would mean staying on the ground, to live within your spirit in the Kingdom of Heaven, and who will say of himself that he has force to do this?), We can put more and more colors on gray fabric of our everyday life.
Using the memory of childhood, you can act directly on the points.
1) Commemorative freshness of emotions experienced in childhood. This anxious feeling can be returned. The main thing – not to be mistaken with the object. Baby soul, perceiving the world, joyfully fluttered from all its faces. An adult has a wealth of knowledge. He knows about the mystery of death, that everything is transient. He knows about the mystery of repetition, that there is nothing new under the sun. No new things or new information can not really shake the soul of an adult. All that people bring into the world is depletion and shallow. But the depth of God’s creation is great. Nature is amazing and unique in every moment of life. If you love to be with it and not to take it just as the external environment, it is possible to regain one of the sources of the perception of pleasure.
Another source, closer to us – is the people. It is necessary to collect good men. Acquire light shines generously to others. As a collector is always looking for the missing links of his collection, and we can spend our time looking for people full of light. The more we give them from our lives, so it will become brighter. There are people with whom you feel joy, and deprive yourself of the joy of communicating with them – it’s a bad asceticism.
2) Childhood is cleaner, children’s sins are easier. Why? There are no skills of sin, but not only. Life is easier, less situations where it is necessary to sin.
The child lives here and now. Adult lives with his future. A child can dream of what will be when he grows up. But he spends his time at the present moment. School, of course, is designed to help him in the next life, but the teacher will not say what this assistance will be concluded in particular. If you drive a child to the realization that he is learning just because it is the knowledge he will need, then he will lose interest in learning and will study bad.
But exactly a child has his future, an adult, frankly speaking, hasn’t. However, we, the adults, drive the motives of our actions, as a rule, from what we don’t have yet. We make plans, and then spend the strength to follow them. We need to do a lot, half of these cases we are saddled on our shoulders, squeezed ourselves with deadlines, and now we are sick of knowing that our plans are cracking, the terms are not met. It seems that we do not have time, and we give up. Double trouble!
Meanwhile, no need to worry about tomorrow, for each day there is enough trouble of its own. Man proposes and God disposes. The goals we have set to ourselves in this life – are not absolute. Absolute goal lies beyond our life, it is a salvation. Anything that does not lead directly to the ultimate goal, can be discarded without affecting the meaning of life. It is impossible to get rid of worldly affairs, but you can drive them out of consciousness. Hands do, mind ponders how to do it better, but the soul can not participate in this process.
It is necessary to stop loading soul with bustle of the day, so it feels free. It will become more accessible to introspection. Its power can be freed to devote to another – the perception of nature, creativity, prayer. When you will free from the need to waste your time for nothing, the soul becomes purer.
3) Childhood is full of trust in the world, but we, unfortunately, lose the faith and thus confidence, cease to trust the world. The crisis of authority – is a standard feature of adolescence, but often it is delayed for a lifetime. The child believes friends, even more, he believes parents and not only them – every adult. Then it turns out that adults can lie, even parents. Moreover, even if they are honest, their knowledge is imperfect – they do not know much, they may even be wrong. They may insist on their mistakes.
It’s possible to regain credibility among the people, only by recognizing their right to make a mistake. The authority – is not the source of absolute knowledge, it is only a translator – to the extent of their competence. The source of absolute knowledge – is God. It is necessary to realize the measure of trust in God. Usually, adults’ measure is very low. We understand that God is omnipotent and omniscient, but it remains lifeless dogmatic knowledge. We know that God is leading each person, offering him the way to salvation, but it is the scheme of the mind, and not a factor of life.
Meanwhile, we are open to God more than a child in front of adults. Our children are still can hide something from us, but what can one hide from God? In every moment anyone of us is before Him. God punishes us, but shows mercy: our life still lasts, and therefore we still have the opportunity to solvate. The Lord is good, he loves us: everything that happened to us if we are obedient to His will, there is for our own good – if we understand a benefit as the benefit of eternal soul, not temporary life on earth.
Trusting Him means to accept His will. Good will. To recognize that what is happening to us – an act of God’s care, the manifestation of God’s love. And then the feeling of childhood will come back. The soul will receive support – with it, inexperienced and weak, there will always be wise and patient, loving adult that suits the way to a bright and clean life in the big and beautiful world that is promised to all of us.
Trusting God, it is already possible to trust people. Each of our meeting is not random, each person who crossed to us can teach us something. All my life I have to learn the ability to learn from the counter. We feel simpler than the first Christians, we have the Creed. We have tuned sense of the Orthodox tradition: what we must admit to ourselves, and what we must not. None of the people answer our questions as fully and deeply as we would liked, but God will answer us through the people. It will take time, and the answers will arise like a mosaic of pieces of conversations and meetings only right way, if it is really important for us.
4) Childhood is rich in capabilities. A child while playing, can sort through profession as clothes, and each may suit him. He can come up with his life in any part of the world, and who says he will not be there?
Child’s future is not deducible from the present. Adult’s future is fairly easy to predict. The possibilities are exhausted. There can be seen a tragedy. The tragedy may indeed be the case if the reduction in capacity is exhausted aging (impoverishment of spiritual, mental and physical strength).
However, this is an exceptional case. Features – it is a breeding ground of the still imperfect action potential. When the action is done, part of past opportunities is lost. A person can come down from the mountain on any slope, but if he actually embarks on a journey, it expects only one slope. The ability to go through all the possible slopes means either the original state of inactivity, or permanent return to the top of the mountain. You can always start over, but if you often go back to the beginning of the way, you will not come anywhere.
The loss of capacity is the witness of life held. There are a lot that we can not do because we have something that has already failed. Maybe we could not even wrong, but we also lost a lot of opportunities to make some even more terrible mistakes. This negative lost luggage – is our most valuable asset. Many original features hide thousands of decoys. Losing opportunities, we arrange our goal setting. In the end, we have only the main goal.
This is not a loss, and the gathering of yourself. What the goals look like – the person is. After retiring from childhood, we somehow made ourselves, and this product – is the main result of our life. It is for this result, we will be judged: it is important that we represent in ourselves – it will be left, and the external will be blotted out by death.
5) Childhood is volume. Biological clocks of the child goes quickly, internal processes go ahead of the external ones. During the unit of time the child has time for inner feeling more than an adult.
Is it possible to reclaim this long time?
External path – is to streamline the use of time, reduce the state “between the case and the rest”, – the main slit, through which flows away our time. More precisely treat to sleep.
However, all of this – are half-measures: self-discipline will enable us with few hours that we lack so much, but it is necessary to enter into a new rhythm – and we will once again experience a shortage of time and feel trapped under the new regime.
It is really possible to regain time only by changing the ratio between internal and external. This means to move the center of gravity inward, to focus on self-observation, to try to keep thoughts and prayers as soon as they are needed.
It is truly a time deposit. Quick sleep takes 10-15 objective minutes, and there can shoot almost a whole life in front of our eyes. If the intensity of wakefulness was the same …
But we wake up and our soul stays in idleness – it is rare when it has to move during the day.
6) Childhood – is a time of love. It is perceived as happy one by the child to the extent that he feels a sincere love of adults. Baby is loved, not because he represents something. Light of a young life, uncomplicated image of God draws our hearts to him, if they are not bent on evil.
Over time, skill of sin distorts the image of God in yesterday’s child. Growing up, we are in a moment realize that you have lost this ability – to cause in people just love the fact that we just exist. However, the need for love remains. And part of our life is spent in trying to achieve someone else’s ethereal love. We assure others that we can and should love. We are trying to change ourselves, to adjust to those whose love we wanted (and not always this restructuring is for the better).
There is another way. It is easier to declare than to follow it, but every step is real. If I want to go back to the atmosphere of love, I have to learn to love myself, because it really depends on my will.
Thank you!
Why do we live in SUCH A WAY: without freedom, love, happiness?
We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but we are less pleased.
We have bigger houses and smaller families, better amenities, but less time.
We have the best education, but less mind, the best knowledge, but worse assess the situation, we have more experts, but more problems, the best medicine, but worse health.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, travel around too fast, get angry too easily, we go to bed too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and too seldom remember God.
We increased our claims, but reduced the value.
We speak too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We know how to survive, but do not know how to live.
Adding a year to human life, but do not add life to years.
We reached the moon and back, but barely cross the street and get acquainted with the new neighbor.
We conquer outer space, but not the spiritual one.
We do more, but not better things.
We clear the air, but pollute the soul.
We subjugate the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less.
We plan more, but achieve less.
We learned to rush but not to wait.
We create new computers that store more information and spewing streams of copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
This time is of fast food and poor digestion, of big men and small souls, of a quick profit and difficult relationships,
The time of growth of household income and the increase in the number of divorces, beautiful homes and destroyed home-fires.
The time of short distances, of disposable diapers, of one-time moral, of bonds per one night; of overweight and of pills that do everything: they excite us, soothe us, killing us…
The time of filled storefronts with empty warehouses.
The time when technology can get this letter to you, at the same time allow you to share it or just click “Delete”.
Remember, spend more time on those people, whom you love, because they are with you not forever.
Remember, say good words to those who look at you from the bottom up with admiration, because this little creature will soon grow, and he will not be next to you.
Remember and hold tight a loved one, because that is the only treasure that you can give from the heart, and it does not cost a dime.
Remember and say “I love you” to your loved ones, but first really feel it.
Kiss and hug can fix any trouble when they go from the heart.
Remember and hold hands and appreciate the moments when you are together, because once this person will not be with you.
Take time to love, take the time to communicate and take the time to be able to share all that you have to say.
Because life is not measured by the number of breaths, but the moments that take your breath away!