PARENTS know that most children are obsessive at play, and probably the most focused meditators on the planet.
Despite frozen fingers and icy noses, after a fresh snowfall the young snow angels must be repeatedly called to supper, often after dark.
Sleds, snowballs, igloo making, coal-eyed snowmen, they are just too engrossing — kids can’t stop.
The poet Wordsworth applied memories of his early childhood to his adult philosophy of life, and his “Intimations of Immortality,” reports Wikipedia,
“was inspired in part
by Platonic philosophy.”
Teaching preexistence, Plato meant that the soul dwelt in an ideal alternate state prior to its present occupation of the body, and the soul will return to that ideal previous state after the body’s death.
Immortality for Wordsworth refers to the immortality of the soul, which he maintained “is felt or intimated during early childhood.”
Wordsworth’s lines inspired Gerald Finzi’s delightful Intimations of Immortality, Grande Fantasia & Toccata:
