An interesting book landed one my porch this morning, one that is just all over the map--dealing with Plato's theories, the shortcomings of modern psycho-therapy, childhood, beauty, love, biography, Judy Garland and Adolf Hitler, just to name a few subjects. I'm still reeling, happily, from such density.
The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Callling was a fine precursor to Mother's Day because it had me thinking about, if not entirely agreeing with, all that author James Hilman had to say about children, childhood, and the role of parents in our individual lives. He comes down hard against the "parental fallacy" ( with its trail of victims) so prevalent in our culture and against the mania to medicate children for "abnormal" behaviors. It is in the dreams, rebellions, obsessions and deviations of early childhood that we can find the keys to understanding our calling in life, if the calling itself hasn't already come through loud and clear.
I'll have to give the book a second reading, in order to do it justice, but for now here's a smattering of sentences that jumped out at me:
- We dull our lives by the way we conceive them. We have stopped imagining them with any sort of romance, any fictional flair.
- Of all psychology's sins, the most mortal is its neglect of beauty. . .that longing in the human heart for beauty must be recognized by the field that claims the human heart to be its province.
- Character is not what you do; it's the way that you do it.
- Imagination cannot come into its own without immersion in the natural word, or at least without occasional contact with its wonders.
Imagination is something I've blogged about before and Hillman sets forth three pre-requisites for furthering imagination in children: 1) that parents or intimate caretakers of a child have a fantasy about that child 2) that there be odd fellows and peculiar ladies within the child's perimeter and 3) that the child's obsessions be given courtesy.
I can see I have my work cut out for me--not so much about the fantasy business: ever since Kipp was a toddler with a mania for the human skeleton, I have imagined that he will grow up to be a forensic anthropologist, keeping me entertained in my old age with many lurid tales. I think I have given, and can continue to give, courtesy with regard to his obsessions. But I feel I fall a little short in pumping his perimeter full of odd fellows and peculiar ladies. One of my cousins had blue hair for a time--maybe that counts. . .and then there is my Aunt Bonnie Buns, a peculiarity from way back into my own childhood, though she only visits a few times a year.
Well, when Kipp learns to read, I suppose I can introduce him into the blogosphere. . .
12:13:41 AM 
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