"you only imagined that."
"it was just your imagination."
"and how do you imagine that's ever going to happen?"
imagination is infused with hope and faith, none of which can be fully seen, explained or understood. it is not easy to hold this mysterious gift loosely; it can be confusing and lonely. but without it, i wonder if we kill off one of the central parts of our identities as God's children -- that of creators.
as a lovely British man i met once said, "dreams? God loves dreams. He's so good with them." He's certainly much better than i am. He breathes life into dreams, lets them grow into bigger things than i would ever trust, doesn't hedge them in mercilessly, or make them dependent on a list of ten steps.
from phantastes by george macdonald:
"do you not know me? but you hurt me, and that, i suppose makes it easy for a man to forget. you broke my globe. yet i thank you. perhaps i owe you many thanks for breaking it. i took the pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the fairy queen. there was no music and no light in them now. but she took them from me, and laid them aside, and made me go to sleep... when i woke in the morning, i went to her, hoping to have my globe again, whole and sound, but she sent me away without it, and i have not seen it since. nor do i care for it now. i have something so much better i do not need the globe to play to me, for i can sing. i could not sing at all before. now i go about everywhere through fairy land, singing till my heart is like to break, just like my globe, for very joy at my own songs. and wherever i go, my songs do good, and deliver people..."
she went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it. she was bearing the sun to the unsunned spots. the light and the music of her broken globe were now in her heart and her brain.
