When I was a child I used to wander into the woods behind our house and create stories about the trees, the birds, the skunks, the lake. I had an entire fantasy world that moved between what I saw and what I “imagined.” As I got older and learned to write, I’d bring a diary and pretend I was a novelist documenting this fantasy world. I lived in my imagination so much that I often got in trouble for not paying attention or spending too much time in my own thoughts–“Amy daydreams too much,” my 2nd grade teacher once wrote.
While my span of attention has certainly improved in adulthood I still find myself wandering, floating, imagining just for the joy of it.
It was only much later in adulthood that Papa showed me that my imaginary world wasn’t so imaginary, that even as a child I was getting lost in the bliss of his story, his kingdom and natural wonders. Sometimes I feel as if I’m making up creatures. I imagine what it would be like to deep-sea dive with Holy Spirit and discover neon schools of fish. Or hop behind Jesus on the back of a kindly old brontosaurus and go romping through a field of lupines, stopping along the way to have a chat with a saint or two. In my imagination, people are so much larger than life–or larger than they think themselves to be. And everything is bathed with love, wonder and wisdom.
The art of imagining isn’t written about nearly enough, if at all, in books on prayer, contemplation, and meditation. And sadly they are missing out on something every young child knows. If anything, most spiritual practices teach us to slow down, to empty the mind, or to tone down the imagination.”Making stuff up,” we tend to think, is the stuff of heresy and mental confusion. And while I understand the concern, having been up close and personal with mental illness and its effects on the imagination, I think most of us struggle with the opposite problem.
There is nothing at all wrong with the art of meditating with a singular focus, or even on a physical object or scripture. But place an image of Christ in front of me, and my mind wanders into all sorts of unique dances of fancy. Why are his hands so slim, I wonder? I imagine them delicately clipping a rose from my garden and placing it in my favorite milk glass vase.
I let my mind roam freely now when I am not in the company of others or needing to concentrate on the tasks of the moment. Even overly “christian” or worship music can be distracting to me, as I often find myself more apt to enjoy silence; in silence I am lifting, flowing, swaying in a story of animals and angels, Daddy and trees. In corporate worship settings I must look still as a rock, but in my body I feel myself almost floating.
For me bliss is getting to encounter the behemoth or dinosaurs, while wandering around heaven’s serengeti like a little kid. There are creatures that have been on earth that are still alive in him. Daddy bellows when the behemoth comes out to play! He made up zebras and blowfish, roses and monarchs. There is so much unnecessary beauty on earth alone. There is outlandish beauty in the deep ocean that went for millennia unseen. How ridiculous the creativity and resurrection life is in his heavens, and I can and do bear witness to it.
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