Native Innocence

"Know you what it is to be a child?" wrote Francis Thompson. "It is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness and nothing into every everything, for ever child has its fairy godmother in its soul."
So much literature and so many films today concentrate on the dark side of life. They call it 'realism' - but whose reality is it?
I firmly believe that the aim of all literature, art, music and film is to raise people to their highest and to bring more beauty into the world.
What we take in through our eyes and ears becomes a part of us, as surely as the food we eat rebuilds our bodies' cells. If we take in a constant diet of the macabre, of murder, of darkness, what are we doing to our minds? Do we not, simply by asbsorbing these things, contribute to the violence and sorrow in the world?
Reading Francis Thompson's quotation, suggests a way that we can transform our imaginations, our thoughts, ourselves - and the world! - by returning to our native innocence.