Restored Innocence - Awe, Wonder, and a Willingness to Remain Teachable

Can a Lost Innocence be Restored?

"The world is full of suffering, and it is also full of the overcoming of it."  ~ Helen Keller

Kisses From Heaven - Inspired by a line from Teasdale’s poem Barter – "

And Children's faces looking up... Holding wonder like a cup."  (see poem below)

I believe we can overcome.  The Infinite Mercy of God's Unconditional Love has made a way.  I think It is possible to see that overcoming and a way to renewed innocence is built right into our physiology. I'll try to show you some evidence for why I believe this; that by divine mercy, this kind of healing or spiritual renewal is linked right into the way we're made.  It might be easier to see, if we reframe and define "innocence" as "the willingness to remain teachable, the willingness to be led by what is good and true."  

Reflection and acknowledgement: There is so much suffering, devastation, violence and abuse in our lives, it is hard to imagine any way back from the brink of such pain or hellish existence.  Eckhart Tolle called it our "pain body." It seems as if there is no way to take memories, experiences, loss, and cruel circumstance back, or to remove the trauma and deep hurt resulting from the events away from the person suffering.  It's not like "it" didn't happen.  And the "it" can be anything from a deep an emotional injury, war, to violent assaults of every kind, and to a devastating loss of any kind - anything that so strips from us our currently held "reality"constructs - the way we thought it was...  Losing innocence seems to be the abrupt disruption or stripping away of world views. A violent deconstruction of our ontological existence.  Healing is about how we hold these experiences in our consciousness.  To give a short example of this: If someone causes deep injury to us, physical, psychic, or emotional. We have been hurt once. If we hold onto that hurt by rehearsing the hurt or trauma in our minds, then we hurt ourselves, over and over again as we recreate the intense pain. How do we interrupt that process when we think we will never be the same? 

BODY THEOLOGY - I'll show you something in our lives, in our very bodies/ physiology that is active with us from birth to death.  

The truth can help set us free - A new reality:  first, the assurance that there is an inviolate place in all people, a Holy of holies place, where Innocence Itself resides. It is here in this place, that the Lord has placed His greatest gift to us, something that "remains" with us, no matter what- fulfilling the divine Promise to never leave us. This most holy of essential "spiritual oils" - Innocence - has visible, manifest, analog features or correspondences the human body and physiological process that can help spring you into action and GUIDE and restore you to healing wholeness. 

There is a French word "soupcon" which means "a certain small something" in other words, "not much, but enough" to build on - fulfilling the promised to never leave us.  In this inviolate place there are divine"remains" or the "essential oils" of purity, wholeness, health, fullness of light, peace, and beauty, no matter our experiences. This is the departure point for healing. 

It is here in this holy of holy places in us, that no man, woman, even child, or circumstance,no event can ever approach, or enter. Nor can it be destroyed in us. Ever. It is from this place where all healing springs.  
This is pure presence, wellspring of Innocence Itself residing in us. It is at the center, the essence of our soul, it is our wellspring of new Life. It is present from first things, to last in first states in the physiology of our bodies all the way to death and old age. 

Let us consider a working definition: Not so much that innocence means what is always pure, new, untarnished, and young- So much as innocence is the thing that keeps us pure, growing ever younger, shining, and renewed...being forever polished (burnished.)  From this understanding "Innocence" could be said to be "the willingness to remain teachable, to be led by what is good and true." 
This is the kind of  renewed regained restored innocence we enter into after we have seen all, done all, experienced all manner of destruction, and find we can still come home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPSAgs-exfQ 

What if "innocence" isn't something that can be taken completely stripped away from an individual?  What if we can return to innocence? 

Here's how I believe the return to innocence in us works:  The return to innocence can be seen in three human qualities or characteristics, impulses to life, really.... call them instincts if you will, but present in everyone from birth - We can see them by looking at those first impulses or "first states" 
in infancy and how they get carried throughout our life...or can be re-kindled.  Like the wise men of the Nativity, we'll return home "by another way." 

1. In the first impulse there is the desire to seek after what is true.  a.) We see it at play in the joy of our first childhood longing: to gaze upon the pattern and countenance of the human face- or affinity for pattern.  b.) This desire to seek after what is true also shows up also in our first games we play and on into adulthood - peek a boo - seeking object constancy.  For everyone, it is a built in at birth as a gift to us from the divine-- the ability to seek and find. So spiritually speaking, this is so to establish divine constancy.  This "seeking after and finding" presents in a myriad of ways: playing hide and seek, chase, exploring, curiosity, discovery, a love of adventure, travel, of mystery- even mystery novels. Ultimately it turns into our interest in life-long learning.  The Divine Itself wants to be found!  Our Divine Mother-Father God wants the divine offspring and children to seek after and find the One who created them and LOVES them and wants to bless them.   God has made it pleasurable for us. We are to be led through our loves and delights.  And so this same quality is at the essence of what it means to have innocence or be innocent: to be ever willing to remain teachable, in awe and in wonder.  c.)  The desire to seek after what is true also has its material analog in following or looking toward the light, and later an attraction to sparkly, shiny, shimmering, things. And in being attracted to brilliance in all its forms. No matter what we call this impulse to seek after and find, to reveal mysteries, toward clarity and transparency, to keep engaging life,  experience life-long learning,  it is the first of  our divine Birthday gifts!  And there are two more. 

2. The next saving grace and quality given to us in infancy is the delight in what is sweet. All sweet sensation or sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. This never leaves us from our first taste of mother's milk, to the desserts of old age. This delight in the sweet sensations extends to the soft touch of a blanket, a sweet lullaby, a parent's gentle caresses and kisses, to soft gaze of wide loving eyes that hold us, even scents and pastel colors are a form of "sweetness." We are created to delight in sweet sensations and this lasts our whole life.   The lightest, gentlest, essential first state of anything (like pastel colors, or a first note on a piano)  is really the delight in what is GOOD and it never leaves us from all our senses.  This is the second of the LORD's Birthday gifts... All these first states belong and remain and belong to the LORD's alone.  There is another, a third, meant to bring the previous two together into a whole; into fullness and into fruition. 

3. The third is a combination and alchemical marriage of the first two; it is the desire and the delight in movement. This "soupcon" gift is for making goodness and truth manifest in our LIFE. We can see analog evidence if it our first comforting rocking in our parents arms, to a stroll in the pram, to twirling round and round, to sliding, swinging, running, racing, riding bikes, skating, and the thrill of racing, skiing and so on.  We want to MOVE.  We love to DANCE. There is delight in movement, especially the spiraling, toroidal spin because it reminds us on an intrinsically spiritual level how Love and Wisdom first joined, danced, joined and expanded to create - pure and simple.  This innate joy and pleasure in movement, is so all that we love and all that we think true can be unified in us and put into action. The love of movement is the IMPETUS to JOIN, to CONNECT, to BE NEIGHBORLY,  WALK and BE WITH to JOURNEY, to LOVE MERCY, DO JUSTICE, MAKE CHARITY and LIFE. 

All three of these divine Birth-day gifts are there in a holy triune. That presence in the Soft Temple of our Body holy of holy places, is the point of departure for all our healing. 

All these first states remain and belong to the LORD alone.  These "first states" of infancy and as they continue through out life are the "first-fruits" of Scripture and for which we are asked to give thanks and make a celebration and offering of these back to the Divine.  They are freely give, to be freely received, and freely returned. This is why GRATITUDE is also a FIRST STATE which begins the healing process.  We are even to give thanks before our blessings are visible! 

Egizo; "already, but not yet." 

No matter how much we lose, or are ourselves lost, these first states of innocence - seeking after and finding the truth; delighting in what is good; and the desire to move and take action - these GIFTS are always held safe, and are waiting to be activated, and bring us home to that place of our deepest belonging - the Heart of Heaven, the Lord Himself. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPSAgs-exfQ 

This is the Poem which inspired the painting above.

Barter – Teasdale’s original title)

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.