Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Childs Moral Imagination

by Vigen Guroian

In trying to be the complete master of his own destiny and of the world, Kay is moved by the same kind of hubris that sent the demons up into the heavens with the magic mirror to ridicule God and the angels. This is Kay’s personal hell.

But it might also be interpreted as a metaphor for our hardened and shattered humanity of which each one of us is a broken piece.

good memories of childhood possess profound redemptive power and are capable of opening our hearts to goodness and love for the rest of our lives.

You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve one day for our salvation … and keep [us] from great evil.

“I can’t give her greater power than she has already!” She declares: “Can’t you see how great that is? Can’t you see how she makes man and beast serve her, and how well she’s made her way in the world on her own bare feet? She mustn’t know of her power from us—it comes from her heart” (p. 264).

The wholeness of man and woman depends upon a relationship of complete mutuality.

seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams.”

Fear is natural, and has a part to perform nothing but itself could perform in the birth of the true humanity. Until love, which is the truth towards God, is able to cast out fear, it is well that fear should hold; it is a bond, however poor, between that which is and that which creates, a bond that must be broken only by the tightening of an infinitely closer bond.

while not all seeing is believing, believing is still a form of “seeing.”

one truly “sees” when one believes.