Food for Thought

Here are some snippets from a book I'm reading which is totally increds. Random quotes, but really good.
'When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize. Small children, knowing this freedom, do things which, to adults living in the grown-up world, are impossible. They see things which grown-up eyes cannot see. They hear things which fall on deaf ears with their parents. And they believe the things they do see and hear. And when, eager and unprepared, they describe these marvelous things, they are told, by kindly and reasonable and well-meaning parents, that they have vivid imaginations. Less understanding adults tell the children that whatever it is they think they have done, or seen, or heard is impossible. Some children are told to stop telling lies. Some are even punished.
We grow up and forget. Children are taught fear early, fear of water, fear of fire. Not that parents aren't right to warn…but there's a fine line between essential prudence for the child's sake, and the destruction of creativity. Allowing the child a certain amount of solitude in a reasonably safe environment is allowing the child's imagination to grow and develop, so that the child may ultimately learn how to be mature. Traherne says, "We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in the present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future.'

'Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of imagination. It binds us where we should be free.'

'The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, said they, the name of God may be upon it. Though there was a little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to man. Trample not on any; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of as to give His precious blood for it; therefore, despise it not.—Coleridge'

'To pray is to listen also, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say. But, if I pray only when I feel like it, God may not choose to speak. The greatest moments of prayer come in the midst of fumbling and faltering prayer, rather than the odd moment when one decides to try to turn to God.'