Visions of Innocence: Spiritual and Inspirational Experiences of Childhood

Hoffman gathers stories and anecdotes from a broad cross section of adults who remember spiritual and peak experiences from their childhoods. For some, these experiences had a profound influence on the rest of their lives. The accounts are grouped by the author into nine categories, including dreams, premonitions, visions, prayers, and moments of philosophic breakthrough. The memories are all fairly short, with a line or two of introduction about the teller. Of the 11 chapters, only two address the meaning of what these people remember. Hoffman, who contends that we need to pay much greater attention to the spirituality of children, links adult problems with a lack of guided spirituality in childhood.