Never Heaven Land

My favourite story ever written is Peter Pan, the story of the boy who never grew up. I was very pleased therefore to see that over Christmas 'Satan's Microwave' had the latest film adaptation on offer and Finding Never Land the film detailing J. M. Barrie's journey in writing the play.

I think the story of Peter and Wendy is so important today in a world where children are expected to grow up too quickly. Imagination is lost on people who are inspected at Nursery, given sex education at Primary School and encouraged to lose their virginity at Secondary School. Imagination is so imoprtant, especially in Catholicism. The Bible is full of stories for children to learn - I was talking to a lady the other day who was saying its so wonderful her grandchildren have Bibles to read; she wasn't allowed one in her day because owning a Bible was considered Protestant. I replied that its ironic that in the days children didn't have a Bible they knew all the stories in it, the Creation, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Christmas, and now they do have Bibles we have to struggle to get our childrn to remember the simplest stories. Children are being told the Bible is all made up and we mustn't believe what is written in it.

Even Heaven requires an imagination, no one knows what Heaven is like yet we teach our children to be good in order to get to Heaven. I remember when I was a child thinking Heaven was made of never-ending chocolate. Now Heaven is just a concept, a place made up to scare children into being good.

We took our young Altar Servers to the cinema on Monday to thank them for all their hard work over the last year. We saw Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium the story of a 243 year old toyshop owner who was preparing to die and wanted to leave the shop to his Manager a 23 year old woman who had a wonderful imagination when it came to playing with children but not when it came to her private life and the outside world. The shop goes into mourning at the imminent death of Mr Magorium and turns completely black and white when he dies. The point of the story is that the woman has to realise her full potential in order to bring the shop back to life. The children loved it, as did I. The other adults found it boring and found it hard to fight off sleep. I was so saddened by that, they had lost their imagination, something so important for working with children. I highly recommend the film to anyone of any age!

Jesus told us the world is going to become more and more depressing as we get nearer to the Final Judgement but we mustn't let it affect our imaginations, we mustn't let the depression enter the walls of the Church. We must keep the child within us alive and active in order to defeat the Devil's army. We must let our children be children so that when they grow up they remember what childhood is like. If we kill the child within the child what will happen to the adult?

Go and read Peter Pan and be like Wendy Darling who became ready to enter adulthood with the mind of an adult and the heart of a child. Don't let our children grow up too fast, keep them safe from the dark forces, love them with all the love you have from the moment of their conception.

Suffer the little children to come unto me for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!