“And the glory of the Lord shone around them.” Luke 2:9

while mary and joseph were in the shack, 
ears full of baby cries, eyes wet: infant life.
God the Father was on the hillside. 
visiting with sheep. 
filling incoherence with light.
declaring through luminosity, “value,”
unto you, bearded men, who smell ripe
as a barn.
it was
awful.
fearful.
like our death.
unfair.
but it always is.
angelic voices speaking
what God's raging presence 
screams, weighing us with light.

and once in a while, we gather. letting the
warm candle light and christmas glow into 
our homes, filling with faces we don’t totally agree 
with anymore, but welcome still with a smell and a smile, 
carrying a gift wrapped mystery. we know not what will be, 
we only know that in the shed is the king of glory, and if it’s good enough 
for Him it’s good enough for me. this world is wrapped and waiting, though worn 
and fraying, and i’m looking for light in your eyes this time, wishing that the same thing that surprised me on the hillside, would surprise me again, inhabiting the humanity in front of me, alighting the dark with peace,
running into the shed, and in that fragile face, a king.
amen.

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Does it matter what we see?

In this famous sketch, the artist captures two perspectives.

Depending on how you look at the image, you may see the enchanting chin of a beautiful young woman.

Or you may glimpse the bent nose of an elderly lady.

Both realities are in the same image. But without realizing it, we operate on one half of the whole image.

And this makes a profound point. When there are two realities captured in one image like this, we can often see one at the cost of the other. However, as we glimpse both images in one, it forces us to transcend what we’ve always seen and delve into the deeper, at times even eternal, truth.

In this image, seeing at once the two-in-one, the young lady and the elderly woman, it invites us to recognize that within youthful beauty also is the daunting reality of old age.

And also reminds us that within old age still remains the youthful blush of beauty.

Comprehending the whole pushes us beyond first impressions as we glimpse life-beginning and life-ending intertwined in one simple picture. We begin to see beyond time itself.

Sure, there are two true pictures, but we receive greater understanding when we can comprehend the one deeper reality.

Similarly, with the imagination, we often make false distinctions between things like reason and faith, mind and heart, logic and intuition, etc. that are really pictures of the whole.

How did we get to this place where the imagination, that is so vivid in Jesus’s ministry, and so integral to human existence and flourishing, could be so widely diminished, jeered at, and even worrisome in many circles?

Despite it’s everyday use, there are a variety of skepticisms about the imagination.

These rise from everything from the pain and loss of a dream. The grief of ordinary and/or extreme suffering. The questions arising from news, institutions, politics, or just what we across on the internet.

We see. We experience. We conclude. We respond. Mechanisms of editing and projection operate in the background of our minds. We make internal adjustments and adapt how we see the external world. To avoid pain. To be accepted. To stand for a cause. To protect what is ours…

And in doing so, we carve into our eyes a certain view of this world. But do we see the whole picture?

Was our emotional high like that young lady in our picture above? Full of life, but hiding unforeseen seasons beneath.

Was our season of suffering, loss, or delay like that elderly woman? Unwanted, but also full of experience, significance, and hope.

If we don’t know that we only are seeing half the picture, we’re liable to form stories about ourselves, our world, and others that are more believable than the finest fiction on bookstore shelves.

And, in our everyday ordinary interface with a broken world, these internal adjustments operate beneath the surface in the modes of original, primary and active imagination.

In a moment or throughout season, we adjust the way we view our past, present, and future to avoid pain, to pursue a goal, to seek truth, etc. Avoiding the imagination is impossible. These are tiny acts of faith. For it is the light of memory and the vehicle of foresight. And its presence is a crucial underlying dynamic in our faith (or lack thereof).

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And still, skeptics and critics of the imagination remain in the pews. This arises from a historical false division in our Western culture between fact and value that still affects us today.

In this division, fact statements—statements of science, research, and objectivity—make up the foundational “stuff” of reality.[i] Stuff worth building your life on. Stuff you can take to the bank.

While value statements—statements of experience and subjectivity—remain on the one side of opinions, options, fleeting emotions, etc., shadowed in skepticism and relativity.

Facts are conceived as value-free data, underived and uninfluenced by culture or religion. The inherit claim is that facts arrive without outside-influence, emotion, or agenda. And accuses beliefs (religion and others) as arising from feeling-driven, or pathological needs, that account for the reliance on a system outside of the self.

It also undercuts experience, emotion, and personal process from the realm of what is really-real. Those may be “fine for you” but they are unneeded when it comes down to brass tacks.

In this model, there is no conversation about what is real in regard to beliefs, emotion, experience, or process because those things are esoteric, individual responses to the hard facts of life, and have no bearing on the greater, shared vision of reality, truth, and knowledge that we humans really inhabit. In fact, the main diagnosis is the reliance on a value-laden statement is a sign of weakness not just in the person’s intellect, but also their character.

Majority of our thought-life are value statements - “I wish this day was over,” “I’m so tired, I could crawl back into bed,” “I’ll never let that happen to me again!”“This job sucks,” “I wish I saw see her today,” “If only I’d said it softer,” “Why is everyone against me?” On and on. We like to think we’re living in a stone-cold system, but our inner lives are rife with snow and steam…

And there the imagination sits, heavy haunched, on the back of our value-statements, elocuating the past and prophesying our future.

Can you see how we’ve neglected her?

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The fact/value model proposes that one could build a reasonable and secure life on facts, but fails to mention how that life would be barren of meaning and experience. It doesn’t take much digging to realize that all our Reason builds her achievements on the back of imagination’s exploration.[ii]

And though it’s impossible to live without the three modes of imagination, beginning to glimpse our society’s distinctions can help diagnose why the imagination is so misunderstood.

In the 20th century, the Church wrestled with this fact/value division, as movements of textual criticism and progressive moral values pushed the Church to either justify faith by facts or become increasingly irrelevant. So, the Church in a quest to justify her truth-statements, unwittingly separated worldview and theology into this realm of fact, separate from those pesky things called emotions, and that airy nothing of spiritual experience.[iii] And, experience of God and spirituality stayed in the “squishy” space of value statements.[iv] The short-term gain solidified the Bible as fact, we had the quest for the historical Jesus, the publication of the Fundamentals, rise of biblical academia, and more. But, in the midst of justifying herself, the church invited-in the fact/value division within her broaders, and skepticism about spiritual experience, imagination, and emotion grew increasingly suspect. It grew hard to say, even in church, what the value really was of prayer, a moving moment in worship, the concert of believers gathering without justifying its reality with a “fact”. And because we couldn’t articulate the experience, it went underground.

For example, today, one might hear it said in Church that “The heart is deceitful…and desperately sick,” but not always rounded out with, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.”[v] Which leaves the heart that is hurting with a good diagnosis and not a thread of hope. You’ll notice, the former scripture validates the fact/value division, while the latter beckons integration into a whole-hearted person.[vi] We separate imagination from the intellect and reason from faith, when these ought to work in tandem, serving each other underneath the love of God.

When the truths of scripture are separated into only the realm of facts, Scripture becomes a source of static ideals, rather than a source of continued revelation (as it’s said to be). One can rightly say, “I have been crucified with Christ,” Or “Love is patient, love is kind, it keeps no record of wrongs,” as transcendent facts. But if they remain only facts, and not realities that invite us into an experience, then the modes of imagination begin to wither. We lose the powerful fuels of our imagination, like desire, dreaming, hope, and longing, that would engage us in a process of becoming the sorts of people who embody these truths we study. One has social permission from the Church to study scripture all day, but it’s whole different issue when the scriptures come alive in our minds, hearts, or convictions through the modes of imagination.

Consequently, great gulfs emerge between our ideals and the reality of our lives. This distance can create significant feelings of frustration, isolation, and discouragement.

Our minds, bodies, and prayers need space where the active imagination can imagine what the process might look like to become a person “filled with the Spirit”.

We need the permission to engage our God-given identity to image-forth that process by trusting and experiencing our hearts “crying, “Abba! Father!”[vii]

And as we face hurdles, disconnects, or failures, we need the primary imagination to consider, reflect, wonder, and integrate the truth with aspects of the journey that didn’t work and discern the best routes forward with God.

All these activities fall under the God-given capacity of imagination in which Reason is a participant and co-creator.[viii]

In a healthy Christian—paramount in Jesus himself, of course—is where the fact/value division breaks down. In Jesus we see the transcendent, objective truth of Scripture finding its home, incarnated into the mind, heart, and experience of a real human being.[ix]

All three modes come alive in Jesus:

1) Jesus is the fulfilled image of God by which we see God fully and are restored,

2) he opens the disciples primary imagination to see and perceive the Kingdom of God in him through the Holy Spirit and

3) he is celebrated for his perfect use of the active imagination in his parables, poetry, and prophesy.

I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:

• Lord, what has stoked my imagination in church or worshipping communities?

  • What has drawn me in? Drawn me toward seeing my heart? Toward seeing You?

  • What has disrupted or even repelled me from seeing You or myself clearly?

• What must it have been like for Jesus to have an imagination?

  • What would go through His mind and heart in an average day?

• Where is my imagination most naturally connected to Jesus?

  • Where is my imagination protective? Distrustful? Hesitant? Or Skeptical?

Take some time to talk with the Lord about this and invite Him into Your imagination.

Footnotes

[i] In response to Western culture, which arises from Greek Philosophy, Renaissance ideas, and Reformation theology, a few authors, philosophers, and theologians shape what is called the “Romantic” tradition, the movement in Germany and England to see the transcendent in nature. Prominent figures, Wordsworth and Coleridge, form a friendship and a major body of poetry and philosophy that later impacts such writers as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald and others. These voices become major influencers for the imagination in the Protestant and Evangelical traditions. But it’s worth noting that other Christian traditions have major voices who speak about the imagination as well. In the Roman Catholic Tradition, we see Saint Ignatius forming practices, prayer models, and whole modes of Spiritual Direction shaped around encountering Christ in Scriptures through the imagination. In the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, we have a rich theology of sacramentalism that roots the logos of Christ in the literal images and forms of creation (see Maximus the Confessor). The study and theologizing of this central capacity is spread across the Christian traditions and in each one is reclaimed by rich and profound thinkers, which can encourage each of us to partner with the Holy Spirit as he shepherds us through images, forms, and creativity in our own lives and traditions too.

[ii] “’But the facts of Nature are to be discovered only by observation and experiment.’ True. But how does the man of science come to think of his experiments? Does observation reach to the non-present, the possible, the yet unconceived? Even if it showed you the experiments which ought to be made, will observation reveal to you the experiments which might be made? And who can tell of which kind is the one that carries in its bosom the secret of the law you seek? We yield you your facts. The laws we claim for the prophetic imagination. ‘He hath set the world in man’s heart,’ not in his understanding. And the heart must open the door to the understanding. It is the far-seeing imagination which beholds what might be a form of things, and says to the intellect: ‘Try whether that may not be the form of these things;’ which beholds or invents a harmonious relation of parts and operations, and sends the intellect to find out whether that be not the harmonious relation of them—that is, the law of the phenomenon it contemplates.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts

[iii] Of course, Scripture is fact, it’s just not fact alone. And when we converse with the culture from this fact-only point of view, we need to make clear what kind of facts we’re considering. Are all the stories literal? Well, yes, but some are illustrative too—like the parables. Are all the statements in scripture promises facts that God will fulfill? Well, some are, but if we’re not clear about who those facts were written to, who was writing them, what they would mean to those who read them, etc. we can suddenly demand ourselves and others to believe facts alone, shutting down the invitation into experience, faith, and encounter that the Scriptures have always been for the people of God. We never want to lose Scripture as fact, but we need to review the divisions we’ve made with value and invite ourselves and others into an experience of God, which requires an active imagination and room for reliability of the data we find in the landscape of experience.

[iv] The problem becomes apparent when we consider how one arrives at what a fact is and how it can be established that it has a sort of standard that transcends other systems of value. Whatever route one choses to prove a fact is value-free, requires a philosophical move that enjoins itself to a system of value (for example, facts are neutral is a value statement, that limits our knowledge to certain range of science and study). Wherever one draws that line is, it remains self-refuting. Then when enforced in our realms of knowledge, it becomes a sort of law by which we can police, judge, control, or undermine the quality of knowledge or persons in their value statements.

[v] Jeremiah 17:9-10 and Ezekiel 36:26

[vi] As a result of minimizing the imagination, one side of the Church can tend to minimize the role of the struggling, in-process, and grieving places that are rooted in imagination, cutting short ones ability to enter-into experiencing the truth of Scripture. Another side the Church as a corrective jumps into the subjective side of the fact/value division, seeking to open the space for the grieving and marginalized, often at the cost of blurring objective truth and moral values.

[vii] Romans 8:15 (ESV)

[viii] “There were no imagination without intellect, however much it may appear that intellect can exist without imagination. What we mean to insist upon is, that in finding out the works of God, the Intellect must labour, workman-like, under the direction of the architect, Imagination.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts

[ix] John 1:14

“The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In the late 1980’s Walt Disney trademarked a term that had been in circulation during wartime America—the term “Imagineer”.

The team at Disney was attempting to create language around the vast creative force as they pioneered theme parks, cruise lines, music, movies, etc. “[We call this] Imagineering—the blending of creative imagination with technical know-how.” They're pie-in-the-sky ideas that seem impossible at first, then become reality with the partnerships of creativity, skill, and of course cash.

One associate of Disney in the 60’s described their culture of imagination this way:

Walt Disney is involved in every operation of every show,” an associate reports.

“He approves the ideas, the scripts, and everything else. You can’t call this a one-man operation—hardly, with 900 employees working here in the studio.

“But we’re all guided by Walt’s ideas and vision: good taste, imagination, and creativity. A man who worked for him years ago summed it up perfectly. He made up a word.

“He called it imagineering, and it’s applicable.””

— Orlando Sentinel, 1963

Now, with whatever you think about Disney, it’s been a powerhouse for imagination—and what I want to focus on is the felt-unity of separate creative acts that become one under a single leader.

We experience an animated movie, a day at a theme park, a ride on a roller coaster, etc., as one beautiful experience. But actually, these are the collaboration of a variety of acts and types of imagination that are underneath the head-creator’s creative mind.

And, Disney, with its magic and its faults, is only a microcosm of the power of the imagination that we inherit from the Creator himself.

Our imaginations, too, are multifunctional and if we take a moment to consider them, we’ll see the layers of wisdom God has created in us through the power of image.

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Our imaginative capacity can be divided into three different modes:

1) original imagination, image as our identity, we being creatures of God’s own imagination literally ones formed from the Mind of another into a reflective form.

2) primary imagination, imagination as a landscape and

3) active imagination, imagination as active choice (or secondary imagination). [i]

First, we see the original imagination as our identity in the Scriptures—we are created as image bearers of God’s own nature. As the image of God, we are images ourselves. As a reflection of him, we express a finite pattern of the nature of God on earth.[ii]

Out of this, our lives, actions and interior world become a vessel by which we interact with God while reflecting his heart and personhood. An image is who we are—we are the live outworking of his imagination.[iii] Not only does this give huge value to our lives and actions, but it makes sense of the layers of personality we find in the imagination—is it any surprise that this vast capacity reflects our infinite Creator?[iv]

Second, imagination is a landscape in which our souls live—the clay of our spiritual formation. Our soul, as God created it, is a landscape of images and forms that make up the texture of our experience of self, God, and others. All these images were once raw impressions, all have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time, and all are God’s original design and dream. Much of the positive and negative spiritual formation in our lives arises from the repetitive use and reinterpretation of these forms. To the degree the landscape of our imagination is in God’s order and under his rule, we flourish. And to the degree it is out of alignment, we wither and perish.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls this landscape the primary imagination—the perceptive capacity of our souls by which the symbols and images that make up all of God’s creation arise in our individual mind.[v] These perceptions that become our mental image of a tree, a fish, or a cross are a “repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.”

In a way, God is actually re-creating the image of those realities he first created within our individual perception. How beautiful![vi]

Consider that the very formation of all the ideas and symbols that cross your consciousness from the womb until now are a repetition of God’s work—his voice fashioning once again the things he first delighted in thousands and thousands of years ago. And these forms and images become the metaphors and meanings that fill our language. The content by which we relate with each other and with God.

The primary imagination includes our inner thoughts, emotions, dreams, desires, longings, griefs, anxieties, appetites, perceptions, motives, impressions, even language itself—all the mental and emotional space we inhabit—this is the landscape of our primary imagination. These layers of images and ideas become a playground or battlefield depending on the formation of this space.

The cross of Christ is a great example of how the primary imagination works. We hear the word cross, without our permission our minds imagine the materials, wooden beams fashioned to fit together and stand vertically. Then, equally as quickly, our minds recall the perpendicular wood beams as a Roman device of extreme torture. Lastly, most gloriously, as believers we locate this as that holy and terrible moment where Jesus took on Death and formed it into Life.

Our imagination integrates all three of these images into the central Christian symbol that points to our salvation. We may speak of the cross as the truth of the gospel, the reason for our faith, but it arrived in our mind as layered images relying on the primary imagination. And as the layers of meaning impress upon our mind, our heart is moved toward this Jesus, his sacrifice, and we worship him for the cross he bore that we know as our victory.

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Third, imagination is engaged as an active choice. In this mode, known as secondary or active imagination, imagination is a creative movement that ancients called “genius” or our “muse” that would impel an individual to create some expression as a cultural act for a community or an individual act of self-disclosure. At times, a savant will create a symphony or poem that moves us to tears. Other times, writers, sculptures, actors, musicians engage lifestyles of creative-acts, making this secondary imagination a specialty profession.

But many of us use the active imagination on an everyday level, creating in meaningful spaces of our homes and work almost without realizing it. Perhaps for you this a gardening space, a sketch pad, designing the interior of a home, or organizing a meeting—all of these are acts of secondary imagination. [vii] If you think about it, the whole of culture and civilization is an accumulation of active imaginations. The goal and work of the active imagination is not to escape or hide in a false reality, but actually to discover more of reality, to follow after the Creator himself and discover how his mind and heart work in all his manifold ways in creation.[viii]

I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:

• Lord, what is coming up when I consider these layers of my imagination

• What is my initial reaction to being made in Your image? To being an image of You?

• What goes through my mind when I think about the landscape of my imagination? Is there a place in me where images naturally flow through my mind? When is that? What sort of images? Have I shared those with you?

• What early images in my history might have shaped who I am? Are their longings or hopes? Loss or dreams connected to images when I was growing up?

• What sort of ways do I use my active imagination? Is it around the house? At work? With others? When I’m alone? Who does my imagination impact? What sort of things “come out” when I imagine?

• What would it be like to share my imaginative space with you, God? What comes up when I think about letting You be in this space? Love me in this space? Reign in this space? Lead this space?

• What would this landscape look like if God was there?

We’ve been considering this God-given capacity called the imagination in a series of posts (Click here to check out the first post in the series)

Footnotes

[i] “It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of superstition and idolatry; in the latter, of schism, heresy, and a seditious and sectarian spirit.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

[ii] “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion….So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them,” (Genesis 1:26-28, ESV) also, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,” (Psalm 8:4-6, ESV).

[iii] “But when we come to consider the acts embodying the Divine thought….we discover at once, for instance, that where a man would make a machine, or a picture, or a book, God makes the man that makes the book, or the picture, or the machine. Would God give us a drama? He makes a Shakespeare. Or would he construct a drama more immediately his own? He begins with the building of the stage itself, and that stage is a world—a universe of worlds. He makes the actors, and they do not act,—they are their part. He utters them into the visible to work out their life—his drama. When he would have an epic, he sends a thinking hero into his drama, and the epic is the soliloquy of his Hamlet. Instead of writing his lyrics, he sets his birds and his maidens a-singing. All the processes of the ages are God’s science; all the flow of history is his poetry. His sculpture is not in marble, but in living and speech-giving forms, which pass away, not to yield place to those that come after, but to be perfected in a nobler studio. What he has done remains, although it vanishes; and he never either forgets what he has once done, or does it even once again. As the thoughts move in the mind of a man, so move the worlds of men and women in the mind of God, and make no confusion there, for there they had their birth, the offspring of his imagination. Man is but a thought of God.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts

[iv] “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end,” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

[v] “The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.” – Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

[vi] The novelist and poet, George MacDonald, too, describes that the created order is “an inexhaustible storehouse of forms…the crystal pitchers that shall protect his thought and not need to be broken that the light may break forth…God has made the world that it should thus serve his creature, developing in the service that imagination whose necessity it meets.” We are saturated with images and forms that contain the very creative power of God, and we are joined to his first creative act in our very living, thinking, speaking, and emoting. It’s as if the Holy Spirit that brooded over creation, is also brooding over all the beauty of our lives—literally inside the perceptive and cognitive powers of our human mind and heart—to, once again, form order from chaos.

[vii] Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls this the secondary imagination—the intentional, willful creation of a phrase, story, language, poem, song, script, novel, etc. This is what we commonly refer to when we talk about imagination and child’s play—pretend. And yet, for adults, the secondary imagination explains why art, stories, and song move us so deeply—the secondary imagination is singing or sighing with the perceptive-art of the author. Moving deeper, the stories of our lives—the ones we dwell inside—are potent with “crystal pitchers” of light, meaning-filled containers that arise from self or God. This is the sacred space we witness when we listen with God’s heart to another’s story. For this is how God is perceiving our stories, the very capacities, the structure of our imagination is architectured after the Creator’s imagination. And Jesus is both incensed and set-on his disciples using their eyes to see the Kingdom and using their ears to hear the King. This isn’t optional for him in Matthew 13, this is literally the difference between faith and unbelief.

[viii] “Licence is not what we claim when we assert the duty of the imagination to be that of following and finding out the work that God maketh. Her part is to understand God ere she attempts to utter man. Where is the room for being fanciful or riotous here? It is only the ill-bred, that is, the uncultivated imagination that will amuse itself where it ought to worship and work.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts

Sixty years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien argued against critics who said his fantasy works led people into escapism. Critics remarked that, at their best, his books were an excursion from reality, and at its worst a lie that created self-deception.

Tolkien said in response,

No one would disagree with the longing of a prisoner escaping into a greater hope.

As Christians, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.[i] And, in a broken world, it is the most natural thing for the imagination to escape into a more-real one, a heavenly one.[ii] And this hope can become a source to beckon people onward.[iii]

In fact, some scholars speak of the imagination as a truth-bearing faculty.[iv] Of course, not all we imagine in our minds is the truth-in-full. Sometimes our imagination can create anxiety, disillusion, or error.[v]

But, no matter what, the objective truth always arrives in our minds by means of the imagination.

The Christian imagination isn’t a flight of fancy or self-deception or even mere child’s play—it’s following after our Father—using our minds to follow after the patterns he’s created.[vi]

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Further, as those redeemed by Jesus, we worship the One who is called, “The image of the invisible God,” and “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” We know imagination has led us astray in the Genesis account, but we also believe our imagination is being repaired and restored by the Holy Spirit.[vii]

Even the fear of being deceived by our imaginations, is putting the image of our deception over God’s ability to counsel us.

It’s actually having more faith in our deception that in the power of truth.

It’s faith in vain imaginings, rather than faith in the image of God. And I mean that both in God’s potent design in us, and in Jesus, The Image of the Invisible God, who we draw near to mainly through the beautiful, image-rich nexus of our minds.

Because of Jesus, the action of imaging is not only central in Scripture, but it is in the nature of the gospel and a significant capacity by which we are able to be transformed “into the same image.”[viii] Because of Jesus, we have full permission to engage our imaginations in perceiving, receiving, dreaming, and healing in this Kingdom.

It would be near impossible to separate the imagery responsible for the good news from the arrival of the good news in our hearts and minds.

It hits us at our core: The image of a cross. An innocent man suffering in our stead. A Savior who is God, life lain down. Naked. Ashamed…all these images resonate with the imagery of our broken world and our broken hearts.

These are potent images that strike us at a primal level. And the ache moves us from our sterile and trapped imaginings, to the imagination of God who thinks and dreams in terms of eternity.

To throw suspicion on the imagination, is to remove it from center in our human identity.

To gather to it, is to warm ourselves on the shared fire of God and man.

When we attempt to uproot the imagination, we uproot the language of our heart.

When we throw out the imagine, we lose access to the deepest places in us.

When we trust God’s presence in our imaginations, the image in us re-lights with a thousand-fold flame.

And we cannot help but become ourselves.

We’ve been considering this God-given capacity called the imagination in a series of posts (Click here to check out the first post in the series)

I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:

• Lord, what has been my experience with imagination?

• Do I think of my imagination as a place to connect with you, God? To find out more about myself?

• Am I concerned about being deceived?

• What would it be like to find you in the midst of my imaginings?

• What images come to mind most often for me?

• What comes up when I consider that I’m made in the image of God? And that You, Jesus, are the Image of the Invisible God? What might that mean for me as an image of God now?

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Footnotes

[i] Galatians 5:1

[ii] “Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object. And this, I think, is just what we find….If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy….In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

[iii] A great example is Tolkien’s relationship with C.S. Lewis, who was a deeply committed atheist, but couldn’t reconcile the deep longings he felt in stories and imaginative works with the dreary and empty landscape of atheism. Tolkien’s conversations with Lewis centered around mythopoeia or a myth/story becoming real—Tolkien said that our imagination points to a reality and that reality is a Person and that person is Jesus, and that real Myth is the life, death, and resurrection that the Church celebrates. It was through conversations about longings that awoke in his imagination that Lewis was eventually led into Christianity and became one of its greatest voices in the 20th century.

[iv] Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God

[v] Likely you will find great imaginations in those dealing with mental health issues, and sometimes the more prevelant or extreme imaginations are in those presenting with paranoia or delusion. Our minds can create very backward expressions of imagination as well. However, in Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton says, “Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain.… Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health….. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite….To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

[vi] “But while the imagination of man has thus the divine function of putting thought into form, it has a duty altogether human, which is paramount to that function—the duty, namely, which springs from his immediate relation to the Father, that of following and finding out the divine imagination in whose image it was made. To do this, the man must watch its signs, its manifestations. He must contemplate what the Hebrew poets call the works of His hands.” – George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts

[vii] Colossians 1:15 (ESV) and Hebrews 1:3 (ESV)

[viii] “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another,” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)

Open your hand.

Imagine I rest an old key in your palm.

“Try this,” I say.

You nod and look up—I am gone—and before you is the wall of a room inset with the frame of a door.

Light emanates from its edges.

The whole length of the door is inscribed with thousands of languages. Some which you recognize, others look only like symbols and signs.

As you approach the door, you notice there’s a nob but no keyhole. Your fingers trace the frame, but it’s no good. The door is locked.

Gently, you place a hand on the nob. It won’t turn—but a warm sensation flutters on your chest.

Your hand reaches for the warmth—what’s that?

A small hole glows upon your sternum. The edges open into blackness. It’s not painful. And it’s shaped exactly like a keyhole upon a door.

Your eyes glance at the locked door. Your hand grips the old key. You lift the key to your chest. It fits.

You turn—it clicks.

The door swings open.

You take a breath and step inside.

As you cross the threshold into an open space—what do you see?

Anything might be there.

It just takes another word or sound, and beauty may arise before you or fear terrify.

Only a few words or images and we are inside a felt experience.

In this space, horror is just as far away as the holy….

As you engage with this, the reflection of our own ideas and dreams rise from the words and meld into a story before our mind’s eye.

We are moved by it.

Drawn into it.

Ache melds with hope.

Wonder evolves into questions.

Risk beckons change.

All this arrives through a vantage point in our minds.

And hopefully, the land we enter changes us—or, put another way, the landscape we inhabit changes in us.

As G.K. Chesterton says, “We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them.”

And, no matter what we think of this capacity called imagination, it’s active in our faith, our fears, and our prayers.

Imagination—the root is from imago, meaning image, suffixed with “ation” that implies the action or process of doing something.

“Action”, for example, is the doing of an act. “Revelation” is the process of revealing.

So, imagination is the act and/or process of imaging.

When we imagine, we are in the act of image-ing in our minds.

It’s as simple as that.

We commonly know this as pretending or storytelling. But our capacity to imagine goes much deeper—into our very nature.

As Christians, we believe we’re made in the image of God. The image of God, in Genesis, is something God writes into Adam and Eve’s very life-breath.[i] Because of this, we’re always in the act and process of imaging.

In a sense, imagination is our nature. As an image we mirror, we reflect God with His creation. Our identity is designed to mirror the Creator. So, what might this imaging action and process mean for us?

We’ll be considering this powerful capacity in the next few posts…

OR, if you’re in the Bay Area, come to our Creatives Conference featuring “The Buried Imagination” this Saturday from 9-5 at High Street Community Church!

Register here: https://hscchurch.org/creativesconference

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And I invite you to talk to the Lord even now:

• Lord, what is coming up for me when I think of the imagination?

• What areas are excited or expectant when I read this?

• What areas are concerned, scared, or even skeptical?

• When do I use my imagination? At work? At home? In relationships? When I’m alone?

• Spend a few moments with God, talking about this capacity He’s given you, ask the Holy Spirit to show you more about your imagination, invite Him into this space…

Continue Reading —> Part 2 in the Buried Imagination - Is Our Imagination Reliable?

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i gather near fire, toes warming and 
i watch hearthglow, oh, 
finally letting snow melt off my soul, 
i catch the shadows of future light, 
dancing in the dim, playing with darkness like an old friend, easy, unthreatened, unresistant, no mask, just dance and disappear and reillumine, radiant now, 
slow then fast, multifaceted and calm.
prayer is so much easier when i stay.
eyes reflect the forge from 
which we were made. and i 
just can’t shake this touch, 
this flame refracts, 
a look from nowhere, 
a glance through me, 
i’ve never been the same, satisfied and still 
hungry, in cold wastes i forget, but 
firelight pulls my mind, my eye, 
i can’t waste time not waiting in this embrace, 
me alone at dusk, me alone 
but never alone, finding me 
more myself and less my own, 
more myself and less and less alone. 
an’ i’m radiant with gratefulness, 
who knew every wish
would find its latch, unlocked, 
and float like sparks into heaven. 
then i knew, right then, i knew You knew. Lord, my friend, this hearth, this haven, this forge where i was, and where i am now, it’s too good to be true. and in the inbetween, its just You me You. amen.

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there’s no way to undo this 
(and i would never want it undone)
because You were the only way through this
and now it’s my heart You have won.

there’s no way to undo this,
now i'm unwound and undone
for the pain that i bore to get through this
is the pain You bore and we’re One. 

Amen. 

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A Deeper Way is an image-rich, interactive devotional that curates space for you to begin this journey. Opening the fullness of who you are to His full embrace. You’ll engage in four transformative areas: a Deeper Dialogue, Dynamics of Desire, Discerning God’s Voice, and an Invitation to Trust.

This time with God can include not only the moments where you might “feel close”, but also will allow space to process dark and dry times, the moments where you might feel distant, upset, alone, broken, frustrated, or full of despair. What if you could not only experience His connection right there, but discover His delight in you as you bring your honest heart to Him?

This is a safe place for the journey of your heart. A place to heal, to receive, and to grow. In this time, you can cultivate space to be with the very person of God, the One Who offers an experience of Himself. He’s already there in the midst of your heart and your circumstances, and, in this devotional, you’re choosing space for God to shepherd your mind, unlock your heart, and open your eyes to His already-active presence.

Take a breath. Lean-in. See where God might meet you.

This interactive devotional helps on a few levels, you will...

• Clarify your heart and describe what sort of journey you’re on with the Lord in this season.

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i want to be in Your presence in a quiet room,
to hide in the hiddenness between me and You.

some days are adventure, with a sword and shield,
where we slay the enemy together,
and watch the giants yield--

other days are excavation, with a trowel and brush,
as we deepen the ancient caves 
and uncover precious gifts,

but today--
i want to stay right here
on the porch, sip our tea,
'til sunrise glows over the fields of corn,

rocking so, two and and fro, listening as birds awake
loving the silence, loving the world,
as it emerges from the grave.

and i scoot close, i lean in, and listen to You breathe
for Your presence is warm, the night is o're,
and Your heart sings.

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when shall i see Your face?
when will i look You in the eye?
certainly, i have fled so many times
(You know i cannot hide).

words will not be enough
the twisting Spirit freely gives
thoughts that pour my spirit through a sieve, 

oh, dearest, let my motion be among 
those who’ve served You deep and long.

if we hold our fleeting hearts,
bring love back again.
if we wait among the crowd,
let Your voice speak within.
when the silly questions enter,
how tenderly You understand.

yes do, let’s, be, hold, when, oh, dearest, when? 

i sit before Your throne,
and did i wander here?
i sit before You asking
and thinking ear to ear, 

“whom do i have but You?
and who do i desire like You?
my heart and flesh may fail,
but You are enough 
always enough.”

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lord, i have lived in rites 
that don’t fit your heart, 
i think of the numbers i counted 
the pressure to fit in, to correspond 
to what they thought, 
i heard my name morphed into a thousand different forms, 
and oh i would be affirmed if only 
i would minimize myself,
turn a blind eye 
but they didn’t know, they didn’t know,
they thought they called a puppet 
someone who they could stuff for full pews
and multiply for a favor with winks and scares
but they didn’t know, 
they were calling a prophet, 
the cloud the size of a man’s hand, 
so small, so quiet, shouting inside, 
using that voice to lance himself, 
but oh so deep, 
the wounds only bleed you, 
led through the grates and sewers to 
the one who they found most fragrant and i 
followed my feet and knees smeared with unthinkable things, 
there odorus, unthinking, repugnant, and willing
i collapse again and 
again on that cage they put you in, 
the locks jangled, shaking the dark, but 
so strong, unflinching, and it took seasons, even sleepless nights, until 
i saw the way through, and felt you too, 
leaning against the bars, leaning toward me, 
leaning in, and found in your face the bravery to 
grasp the lock and, yeah (oh yeah) that old key i’d forgotten, i held it, though 
all their names called it a category, it was just me, and then,
with a click, it unlocked you, and i couldn’t believe the wings, the firey eyes, 
the rage, the fury, the light, the purity, oh it was heaven, it was heaven, i didn’t know, 
i didn’t know, it’s all i wanted, oh down so deep, down there, all you wanted, all you know, all i wanted all along, all you wanted, that one old, forgotten key…oh look now, look now, fresh beats, full blood, full flight, and ah, bright beautiful wings.

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poets of old 
sat before the firelight
sang the songs of the gods
beckoned them to flight

but now i sit, just me,
in a lonely room, and beckon me,
and the echoes reverberate off a white ceiling

and i wonder who was more deceived?
and when beauty finds me?
Who is it?

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Jesus, i find your spirit
stirring me in halves,
one toward the song of heaven
and i am lifted from a miry mess;
the other dwelleth in darkness below
and i both pity and wound the soul
in fractures, shattered and melted into
mirth and earth, the concerns of
pilgrims and progress seems only
a mirrored image of the path down,
down,

down into darkness's breast,
and i find myself sleeping my life away, and 
when i am stirred, only 
weeping, weeping, until i sleep again, trapped 
in an unrestored embrace, love 
that dwelleth deep, but cannot keep me 
safe, "Cannot keep, cannot keep," i mutter 
amidst a dream, i seem 
piteous, ignorant of these 
high, sterile eyes, staring 
at my skin, clean of compassion, and 
composed in softening generalizations; and 
i ache, "Would you dismiss him so quickly?"
i wake, to hands, and
a face, a warm tear and
a look. ah, you're still 
here.

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light and fire, i am a
little flame, in a small dark
space, i am binding wind, feeling it
tug back hair on skin, a fluttering
smoking coal fighting to say anything
close to 'hope' without the 'less' and
i wish it wasn't so sad, so me, so much
work to keep this little flame alive, and it is
getting cold, it's been cold, but it really is 
now, and the spark so small, is it really so insignificant, i think
i'm tired, tired and winded, i think i'm managing, i think i'm
worried that this fire is more about me and 
if i look away, if i do anything
out of the ordinary, if i do anything but
wish and watch and wish that it'll be just a blink and 
end with a breath, even my own subtle cough, and 
woosh, it's all gone...

ah, there, here, i am seeing
my fear isn't really about the fire, it's really being alone,
in the dark, and oh this fire is merely a sign of me keeping me 
warm, and i'm so tired of me keeping me keeping me, throwing
kindling from my mind upon a fire that is only dying...

and i know the worst is that this isn't the way it's supposed to be, 
the promise, the fire, the promise, oh, i can see it just behind my ears
bright, burning, a quiet whisper, burning, oh that voice--oh that
song, it's so far away, it's through the dark, is it far away? is it dark? Lord,
am i always so alone here? what does it take to light a fire again?
it is just me?
it can't be.

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i have been seeking things beyond the city, 
unto the edge of the world,
and though i did not sail there 
i saw the edge unfurled.

the cascades endless drop 
silent but for downrush sounds
as desperate droplets race higher 
and settle in a starlit sky.

and i grew afraid, here, 
in this stark unfeeling end;

i’d hoped for faces to look my way 
but everything remained still, silent.

dare i ask, “where were the brave,
here at the end of the world?”
the adventures, stragglers, and sojourners, 
haven’t they too yearned for this fearless place?

and what of the edge, 
where the starry host peak over this horizon,
do they alone know the height and depth, 
and must i ask to find them?

oh, tell me falls of endless light—
where do your waters meet with land, 
and is it peaceful, is it safe, 
is it worth this momentous, unfurled end?

and how can i imagine such impossibilities, 
won’t they always lead away, 
from my familiar city, my warm bed, 
from my love’s precious gaze?

come to me, Ends of the earth 
that i might learn my end,
but meet me in the city, 
and touch the living dead.

i thought i might gain from You 
by seeing through Your eyes,
but i am finding contentment here
just being seen by Thine.
 

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