| Spiritual Humour |
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| The Wonder Years |
| �I used to be a pilot!� My son Jim informed me one day. I knew he was telling �porky-pies� as he was only 3 years old at the time, and couldn�t even ride his bike. Of course, he may have been remembering a Past-life. He told me he had lived in France and had flown aeroplanes. He was quite nonchalant with the information, as though recalling it was the most natural thing in the world.
It�s a shame we have to grow-up, isn�t it? Somewhere along-the-line we lose that innocence and sense-of-wonder that children instinctively have. Personally, I refuse to fully grow-up and still cling to some of my childhood mementos; my cherished collection of Tintin books, a Purple Rage drag-racing car, and of course, not forgetting � my beloved footballing bear, �Chopper� Gutteridge. I could never part with them; it would be like losing a limb if I threw them away. At what point, when growing up, do we start to lose the magic of being a child? When you�re little everything is possible, anything is believable. I caught sight of Santa one Christmas; he smelt strongly of Colt 45, and his beard grew at a funny angle, the majority of the hair being under his left ear. He made strange hiccupping sounds and I think he had a bad foot because he stumbled around a lot. I knew he�d call even though I hadn�t been particularly good that year; I had kicked my primary school headmaster, Mr Preston, on the shins and made him hop around as if he were doing a rain-dance. Served him right though, (nobody confiscates Bernard - my �action man with gripping hands�, and gets away with it) in my book, he got everything he deserved. My mother didn�t see it that way however, and punished me severely. I think she was just embarrassed that her son could still act so petulantly at age 25! I never had imaginary friends, but for those children who do have them - are they really imaginary? As a child, you are only recently parted from the world of spirit on your journey here, so it seems reasonable to presume that children can still have some form of contact with the other-side. |
| A good mate of mine had a �friend� from as early as he could remember. He talked to him all the while. It was years before he realised that nobody else had friends like this one, who could appear and visit on a regular basis. This boy found nothing unusual in the fact that his friend was an adult and looked like one of those Indians in the Saturday morning cowboy films. Eventually, because he didn�t �grow out of it�, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist, thinking he was schizophrenic. The verdict was that he was a normal child with a healthy but over-active imagination. Now, as an adult, he is a Medium, Trance-channeller and Healer, and he�s still working with his �imaginary� Native American.
So, I�ve made a mental note that the next time one of my sons tells me something that sounds far-fetched or beyond belief, I will listen a little closer; although, sometimes of course, kids do believe in twaddle... As children, my best friend and I were convinced that we held supernatural powers and spent one entire Saturday staring intently at a glass of water, trying to change its colour, wholly by the power of our thoughts. It was hardly water-into-wine, we weren�t that good; water into dandelion-and-burdock would have been quite impressive though. We were also convinced that the Spirit World was trying to contact us through my tape-recorder. I had a cassette of the Beatles, and half way through �Let It Be� the tape went funny and the sound faded in and out, as if Paul McCartney was singing backwards through a bucket. We played and then re-wound the strange noise numerous times trying desperately to decipher this message from the great beyond. Someone, or something, was definitely trying to make contact. After hours of listening intently we finally de-coded the veiled astral message. It was: �HADOCK, HADOCK, BELLYFLOP, POODLE!� Thirty five years later, I�m still trying to grasp the significance of this proclamation. Answers on a postcard please... Anyway, I�m off now to play with �Chopper� for half an hour before the wife gets back from shopping. |
| Refusing to Grow-Up, Spiritual Writer Nick Richardson
reminisces about a time when anything and everything was possible |