Tristan and Charlemagne
playing in sandbox at children’s
museum

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” ― Julian of Norwich

This quote from this English mystic of the 14th century has come to my mind recently. The senseless gun violence on the streets of Milwaukee, our president’s killer drone attacks on people of Yemen and the renewed violence in Iraq are all good reasons to despair. It is the hope and faith that “all shall be well” that can keep us going at times.

Children seem to have a natural instinct that “all shall be well”. They can be sad, even crying and all of sudden be smiling and laughing. I believe it is, in part, because they live in the moment and when the moment changes from one of sadness to one of joy they can also change. Also children have great imaginations. Their imagination can transform them easily into another moment of experience. My godson and his brother, five and six, reminded me of this the last few days.

When I took them to the Betty Brim Children’s Museum they had an opportunity to allow their natural instincts and imagination take over, be it riding Harley Davidson Motorcycle, working in an imaginative car repair shot or playing in a sandbox. Older children might be somewhat bored at this museum and parents, mostly mothers, enjoy the joy in their child’s face. Some of this was also true at the Urban Ecology center when looking at a snake or going down a slide looking like a river falls, can bring great joy when the imagination is active. Formal education seems to be one of the big foes of imagination. The older a child gets and “knows better” the lest the imagination is prominent.

Writing, to be sustaining and absorptive, needs to use imagination. Praying with imagination of the sense as St. Ignatius urges us to do in the Spiritual Exercises can have a lasting effect on our mind, body and soul. When we touch, hear,see, taste and smell something, although it be only in the senses of our imaginations, it becomes real and alive in our memories.

I have noticed that when a child or I am tired the imagination decreases. There seems to be some type of energy active for use of the imagination. So be like a child, rested, live in the moment and use imagination and “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”

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