Introduction

Introduction

Joy in Surprise

Children love to see things happen! A movement out of the ordinary, a color that changes all of a sudden, a difference in what was; a flash, a funny turn, some bit of a something that elicits a “wow!” A thaumatrope has this kind of wow factor. It is a small disc with a picture on both sides and strings on opposite sides of its circumference which are used for spinning. A wind-up of the strings will let the disc spin, making the pictures super-impose upon each other revealing a new picture. (I will show you how to make one later.) The word comes from the Greek “thauma,” which means miracle, or marvel, and “trope,” from the Greek “tropus,” or Latin “tropos,” meaning turn direction. In the 19^th century some of these discs were made as toys to give double meaning to British governmental tribulations at the time. A popular thaumatrope during that time showed a bird on one side of the disc and a cage on the other. When the disc was spun the bird became a caged bird.

Children love these funny turns and even if they have seen something a dozen times, if it has a bit of a “funny turn,” they still enjoy it. Once you have drawn them in by these amazing turns you have caught them and can teach them; plant little seeds of God’s love into their hearts and mind with words or other experiments to help concretize truths in their minds with the memory of the physical experiment. They may not always remember the details of the experiment or the lesson but they will remember how they felt and will recall the goodness, the magnanimity they experienced. This feeling is actually the elevation of the dignity of their soul. It is a realization of God within them, around them and, I believe, it condenses all the universe into a flash, a moment of understanding to them that they, and others around them, are important, loved specs in this world and in that knowing comes the beauty of believing that God allowed, made, this moment for them in order to show His great love for them. I believe it makes them feel safe and secure for a moment and that feeling will be able to be remembered at later times. It makes them believe that they can climb across all kinds of obstacles or problems with the knowledge of this love, power, and grace that has lifted their thoughts and minds to God, their maker, sustenance and deliverer. For a moment they have hope and a spark of joy. Listen to this: “Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!” Nehemiah 8:10

Children have many “bug bears” they cannot verbalize. Oftentimes they don’t know why they are afraid, why they act the way they do, why certain things trip them up and make them feel awful, angry, sad. Do we, as adults, know these things? I’m sure I do not! We try, we study, we try to analyze ourselves and others by using self-improvement books and analysts but there are some things we just can’t quite get to the root well enough to be able to pull out all the rhizomes. Pieces of the problem surface again and again…sometimes it seems the nastiness of the problem gets easier to get rid of but perhaps we just get better at squelching the memories and letting the blasted root bury itself so deeply we think we have gotten rid of it. It is my belief that all of us have a need for that spark of the Divine to touch us, to heal us, to remind us that we are His and that we are worthy of His spark no matter how cantankerous we are or how much we have chastised ourselves with guilt for real or even imagined offenses. A touch of the Divine gives us, youngsters and adults alike, a spark of joy and that, we know, is our strength. “Rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!” Neh. 8:10

In these lessons I hope to elicit, through experiments and funny turns, a rekindling of God in you and in those to whom you show these experiments. I hope, in seeing the effects of God in your life, the lives of others, and in the world around us that no belief becomes belief and weak belief becomes strong. I hope that we all come to know that there is One God who made us, loves us, and draws us to Him. With His grace and through His grace we will come to know Him and see the effects of His grace in us, others, and our universe.