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Let’s Escape this Life for a Day | learn1
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…”
Personal Blogs
Why Are We Here? Let's Escape This World For a Moment
Friday 6 September 2024 at 19:38
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday 28 August 2025 at 12:50
The Secret Kept in Children's Books and Picturebooks
Saturday 24 August 2024 at 11:03
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jim McCrory, Monday 26 August 2024 at 11:13
"“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis
Image by https://unsplash.com/@matblueforest
I have an embarrassing secret. I am happy to tell you what it is so long as you don’t tell anyone. Is that a deal? This is my secret. I love children’s books. At my age I should know better, but it's an addiction . I love them so much that I changed my degree from a Literature Degree to an Open Degree to accommodate EA300 Children’s Literature with The Open University.
Gyo Fujikawa is the most addictive for me. Children in paradise. Waving from tree houses. Gentle fairies and children no bigger than polka-dot toadstools. Captivating. But, there's the loneliness of the child with no one to play with except a frog. That saddens me. I was a lonely child and I empathise.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-gyo-fujikawa-drew-freedom-in-childrens-books
Then there’s Astrid Lindgren’s The Children of Noisy Village. I’m a Swedophile who can speak a few words of Swedish and I am in awe of the beauty and setting where the tale is filmed. An age of innocence. Swedish village life that will never return, perhaps.
https://tv.apple.com/no/movie/the-children-of-noisy-village/umc.cmc.13bmjs0xgg1sv8sju2tv3za5j
There’s the Portuguese word that best explains my longing to enter a world that these stories encapsulate, Saudade, a longing or nostalgia for something that cannot be realised.
I guess the reason such stories appeal is the desire to escape mentally from this broken world. C.S. Lewis wrote:
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
Interesting, but what world did C.S Lewis mean? Did he mean the world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? No, he was a Christian and an academic who wrote children’s books, Christian, apologetic and academic books. The world he was thinking of was the world recorded in Luke 23:43 “Truly I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Writing: © 2024 Jim McCrory
The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo
Tuesday 16 July 2024 at 11:06
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jim McCrory, Wednesday 17 July 2024 at 12:21
Image of Bran, Romania, by Calin Stan at https://unsplash.com/@calinstan
The
Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo
In a recent post, I wrote
about a music teacher who changed my life and made me believe that Scandinavia
was my real home.
Last night, my wife and I watched a moving documentary on Netflix called The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo.
It told the story of a teenage Chinese boy with a good heart who developed a deep desire to study literature and Romanian language in a Romanian university. His love for the country and nation was inspired by the Romanian national poet, Mihai Eminescu. Yuguo, left an incredible impression on his university teachers and the nation as a whole. Somewhere in the future haven of wonder, I hope I will meet Yuguo. His story among other matters, stand as a testament to the transforming power of literature.
I'm curious about all this; is there a place you always felt you belonged to? Make a comment, please.
*******
“You may have the universe if I may have Italy”: Giuseppe Verdi
After the documentary, I asked my wife, “Is there a place that draws you and makes you feel you belong there?” She replied, “Italy.”
C.S. Lewis wrote of the emotion that creates a desire to live in another world as a glimpse of a future paradise. He wrote,
"If we find ourselves with a desire
that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that
we are made for another world.”
Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.
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