When asked if he believed in God, the 19th century French painter Gustave Moreau replied, "I believe only in God. In fact, I do not believe in what I touch nor in what I see. I only believe in what I cannot see; solely in what I sense. My mind and my reason seem to me ephemeral and of dubious reality. My inner consciousness alone appears eternal and unquestionably certain."  He desired to create a work in which, "the soul can find all the aspirations of dreams, tenderness, love, enthusiasm, and religious ascent toward the higher spheres, where everything is elevated, powerful, moral, and beneficent, where all is the joy of imaginative, lyrical flights of fancy to distant lands, sacred, unknown, and mysterious." ~from Nov. 2015 Magnificat

My three siblings were already school-aged when I was born. For the first six years of my life, it was just my mother and me at home during the day. This was not like being an only child. My mother had three other children to think about and care for, a house to keep, meals to prepare, laundry to do. She had no clothes dryer back then; everything was hung on lines: outside in the yard during the fair months, inside in the cellar during the cold ones. Ironing was a necessity. Just keeping us all in clean clothes was a lot of work. In between these chores, my mother sewed.

While my mother worked, I played. I was a good, quiet child--this I know from being told. I would play by myself for hours, my mother said. But here is what I remember: having playmates. The sunbeams, the maple tree, the pear tree, my "pickle" tree (a boxelder), the birds and ants and earthworms, the clouds and sky and stones and dandelions all played with me and talked to me.

And there were other friends, too, the ones I couldn't see but could sense all around me. (I had very poor vision as a young child and only had use of one eye for several years.) What I remember most clearly was singing and dancing with them and the feeling of their smiles.

My family thought I was funny and said things like, "That Susie has an imagination, doesn't she?" I didn't know what imagination was, but I knew it meant that they didn't believe I was telling the truth.

I was. 
 ♥