I looked up the meaning of Innocence yet again, and it says, “Freedom from sin or moral wrong.”
Freedom from sin and moral wrongdoing…to be free of engaging in such behavior is to be innocent once again?
To be free of moral wrong doing…
This meaning has more of an impact to me as a mother watching her daughter who is newly freed from an abusive relationship.
I love that you can return to the state of innocence when you leave the moral wrong doing.
Another meaning is,
”It can also refer to a state of unknowing, where one’s experience is less than that of one’s peers, in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale.”
I love this meaning as well, for it implies the state of unknowing due to the lack of experience.
What I knew to a DNA level was that my daughter was at a disadvantage that her experience level was sorely lacking, where she was like a babe in the woods.
Isn’t it interesting that you can become innocent when you are free from moral wrong doing or when you lack experience?
My childhood religion’s set point was that we were all damaged goods that the body itself is filled with sin and our minds and thoughts riddled with landmines of moral wrongdoing, we were born not innocent.
I believe this is totally the opposite.
The church and its leaders were damaged goods, their psyche filled with feelings of unworthiness, and they preached from that standpoint.
Many a parent preaches from their own private pulpit when they raise their children, we are seen from their lenses of self.
I have viewed my children through many false lenses.
I have seen them in the eyes of the church, the views of others, the fears within me, through my lacks and my moral wrongs, but I was able for the first time, sit with my daughter and see, feel and know her innocence.
Being able to sit, as an innocent mother with an innocent daughter is a beautiful thing.
I have seen myself and her both being locked in a dance of moral wrong doing, and then both of us being set free.
My dance lasted 46 years, and then six years of intense inner inspection, seeking of self, looking at the world critically and with discerning eyes pleading for reality to show me who I am.Her dance was much shorter, but the lesson equally as meaningful.
I would like to think that my bully pulpit of innocence shortened the time she had to suffer.
That by me seeing me with clear eyes, I then had a better lens in which to see her.
It is unbelievable yet believable, that my mother saw herself in me.
This is why; “the sins of the father onto the children” make the children sinners. They don’t have a chance to make their own sins, for they follow what they are taught.
Just the very clear and simple view of reality gets distorted, when no one knows what innocence is.
The greatest tragedy of a dysfunctional family, isn’t that they don’t understand evil, it is instead that they have no idea what innocence feels like, what freedom tastes like, what love is.
Love is innocent.
Love is being free of moral wrong doing.
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