Good morning!
We are in the throes of prepping a kid to ship out to college, so the house looks like an Amazon warehouse. Does anyone need any boxes or plastic wrapping material? I fear we are filling up the ocean all on our own.
The Part Where There’s an Essay:
More Than Daydreaming: Why I Talk so Much About Imagination
I had a conversation with a friend recently about her little boys. One of them is in the stage where he has imaginary friends; at present, he has three of them, with nonsensical names she doesn't understand.
Mom is doing a great job respecting the stage he’s in. She allows this kind of creative play without overly managing it because she knows it’s a typical phase for preschoolers. This, too, shall pass. He’s working out his imagination, playing at being a friend, and making adventures.
This behavior is typically what comes into people’s minds when I mention the word “imagination.” Christian adults (at least in my wing of the church) not only downplay the importance of imagination, they frequently roll their eyes at it.1
To better help my practical, reasoned, literal friends, I have composed the following list of ways that you, a thinking Christian person, ought to welcome and strengthen the work of your imagination in your spiritual life. If you’ve got more to say, please comment!
Empathy: this is frequently mentioned in studies about reading fiction, but the same might be said of reading anyone’s story: can you put yourself in someone else’s place? This requires imagination. What would it be like to be that person, in those circumstances, with that struggle? This is a way that we can better love one another, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Enjoying Scripture: Yes, I said “enjoying.” The Bible is first and foremost a story — the way that God has revealed himself to his people. Stories are meant to be experienced, enjoyed, and soaked up. I find that imagination helps me when I read the Old Testament (“what was it like to wake up every morning and find that your shoes still didn’t need to be replaced?!”) and the New Testament (“what did it sound like next to the balcony where Pilate was addressing the crowd? what was it like in the room where Jesus was anointed before his death?”). These are questions and exercises I see all the time in children’s lessons, but at some point, we stop putting ourselves through these considerate paces of sitting with the amazing, mysterious nature of God. The result: the Bible doesn’t affect us anymore. The further we distance ourselves from the real humanity and the real Diety present in the Bible, the further apart our heads grow from our hearts.
Hope for Heaven: Christians believe in a real, present Heaven, where we enjoy God, feast at a table, and work and worship to his Glory. People we know are doing this very thing, right now. Do we believe that, really? Our daily choices, stewardship, and worship indicate our thoughts (or lack thereof). Do we consider the possibilities of What Will Be?
Hope for People (Ourselves and Others): A while back, I wrote about John Steinbeck’s epic novel East of Eden, and the ways the characters either have hope for one another — or don’t. Even the author himself betrays an utter lack of hope for one character (Cathy, for those of you who’ve read it). The fact that there’s no hope for her — that she is “pure evil” — affects the way that we as readers perceive her actions.
In the same way, the presence of real hope for ourselves and for others affects the way we live. If we are basically cynical about the possibility of real change in ourselves and others, we will not think and work towards that change. If you think your coworker will never stop that annoying habit; if you think your child will never outgrow that phase, your actions towards them will indicate that.
If you think that you are beyond the help of the Holy Spirit, if you are unable to imagine a way in which God can change you into the likeness of his Son, you will become stunted. By laying down the rails of imagination, we remain open to the ways in which God is molding us into his likeness.
Dear logical, well-read, well-reasoned friends, I beg you to remain open to the work of imagination in your grown-up, tidy, rational life.
It must not be supposed that I am in any sense putting forward the imagination as the organ of truth. We are not talking of truth, but of meaning: meaning which is the antecedent condition both of truth and falsehood, whose antithesis is not error but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. It is, I confess, undeniable that such a view indirectly implies a kind of truth or rightness in the imagination itself.
-CS Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”
For the Anglophiles
This week we’re turning our attention to the Isle of Sark: “The UK government is still responsible for defence and international relations here, but the semi-autonomous island with its own United Nations country code (680) is a defiant outlier – it was the last feudal state in Europe, only dismantling its almost 450-year-old feudal system of hereditary government to allow for better democratic representation of its 500 residents in 2008.”
Reads & Listens of the Week
In Christian Publishing, ‘Platform’ Is Being Weighed and Found Wanting: Christianity Today explores the struggle that publishers are finding around the question of an author’s platform and how that translates into sales of books.
Was America Ever Christian? Founding, Awakening, and a Common Myth. “That Christianity in America arrived at a place of commanding influence in American life in the years before the Civil War was the product of ceaseless cultural energy by Christians themselves in the decades after 1800.”
Is Christianity Misogynistic? Rebecca McLaughlin, in an excerpt from her book 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity.
Are Apple and China breaking up? This is about a month old, but still the question is worth asking — if for no other reason than maybe I won’t be the only non-iPhone user in my group chats one day.
Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens. -JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Even worse, I have experienced this! In real life! Right in my face! Let’s control our faces, everyone. #fruitofthespirit
Imagination! I love it. You know this is one of my pet topics - so bullet-pointing all my thoughts:
1) love that CS Lewis quote!
2) I found the Habits of the Household chapter on Play so helpful in providing a mindset to think about nurturing children's imaginations. He recommends "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale" by Frederick Buechner which is on my list to pick up ...
3) We adore the children's book we just found "The King and the Dragon" - a retelling of the gospel that follows Tolkien's storyline that the arc of the gospel can be summed up "Kill the Dragon. Get the Girl."
4) It does make sense we'd be born with imagination (from imaginary friends and a fear of the dark to easily believing that "God is always with me."). This is not our home, right? We must not be the people stuck in terrible purgatory like those in the Great Divorce who do not imagine anything greater beyond their present "resting place."
Finally, ah, STEINBECK!