we are brought into the world as “sparks of the divinity”

[Gabrielle Dean]

In a letter in 1819, the English poet John Keats argued against his culture’s prevailing view that the world was a “vale of tears” through which humans had to pass in order to reach heaven’s joys. His view was very different. “Call the world, if you please, a vale of soul-making,” he wrote. Instead of being passive passengers carried through the world by an all-powerful being, we are brought into the world as “sparks of the divinity,” and we are charged with the work of becoming souls. 

Four sparks of divinity - Summer and her parents with Cecelia