Andrew Wyeth, one of the greatest American painters in my opinion, said that he did his best painting not when he was in the studio, but when he was walking through the woods and noticing the play of light upon a leaf. That image (and others), caught by his "right brain," and mulled over by his "left brain" was the source of his creativity and talent. In the same way, I believe that idle, unscheduled, time for children is the source of their own creativity and talent, a rich source of imagination and pleasure.
In her Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Anne Catherine Emmerich, a visionary, tells of her own life as a child:
For when I was a child, whether in the woods, on the moors, in the fields, with the cows, plucking ears of corn, pulling grass, or gathering herbs, I used to look at every little leaf and every flower as at a book. Every bird, every beast that ran past me, everything around me, taught me something. Every shape and color that I saw, every little veined leaf, filled my mind with many deep thoughts. But if I spoke of these, people either listened with surprise or else, more often, laughed at me, so that at last I accustomed myself to keeping silence about such things. I used to think (and sometimes think still) that it must be so with everyone, and that nowhere could one learn better, because here God Himself had written our alphabet for us.
So now, when I followed again in my visions the boy John (the Baptist) into the wilderness, I saw, as before, all that he was about. I saw him playing with flowers and beasts. The birds especially were at home with him. They flew onto his head as he walked or as he knelt in prayer. I often saw him lay his staff across the branches; then at his call, flocks of bright-colored birds came flying to perch on it in a row. He gazed at them and spoke familiarly with them as if they were his schoolchildren. I saw him, too, following wild animals into their lairs, feeding them and watching them attentively (Chapter 27).
Anyone who has ever heard of Francis of Assisi will recognize in him the same spirit and charisma that Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in John the Baptist. According to her visions, the boy John was taken to the wilderness by his mother Elizabeth because of Herod's determination to slaughter all the young boys around the age of two. In the wilderness, John, at first, was hidden and cared for by the Essenes. Later, he was a naturalist who learned to survive on his own; he was at home in nature.
Emmerich's descriptions of John reminded me of my own brother, who spent most of his life roaming the woods -- and taking me with him. There, we looked for snake eggs, built tree houses, crawfished in the nearby canal, and once even dragged home a baby alligator from a nearby golf course that housed a pond. My brother learned nature from nature, and he taught me about the kinds of clover, the different birds, berries, or whatever we found in the woods. We climbed trees and just sat there, listening to the sounds of the forest all around us. It was from him that I acquired my sense of peace in nature and the ability to reflect there on the many gifts of God.
How different for my own children who grew up in an urban setting; for them, there were no woods to roam in silence or trees to climb. The snakes and other wildlife had been driven out by housing developments, and television was much more interesting than anything outside the house. God bless those parents who still take their children camping, canoeing, and hiking. They are giving them the most precious gift of all -- the gift of nature.
Don't be so hard on yourself. Your children were allergic to everything and one would burn if she even looked at the sun through a closed window. Not a prescription for happy camping.
ReplyDeleteAnd reading the writings of your children, I see they have no shortage of imagination. They are some of the most magical humans on the planet.