I scanned an article in Christian Century about clergy and imagination. For some reason it didn’t catch my imagination, but it did remind me that Coleridge (Samuel Taylor) had a very high regard for imagination. For him, and I agree, imagination is an important way in which we are created in the image of God and given the ability, perhaps only potentially, to participate in the act of creation. It is the imagination that is able to bring something out of nothing: a poem, painting, sculpture, novel, music and what more besides. It is through our imaginations that we are able to become open to the full presence and mystery of God. Things of great beauty are the products of our imagination, but so also are things of great ugliness and violence. The gnostics had the idea that there were two gods, one the great and good God and the other a distorted and rebellious version of the first. They may have been on to something, except that the second and lesser god is us. Human imagination gone awry is evil personified. Imagination gone dead is tragically sad. But imagination that reflects the love of God for, in and with his creation is holy.
I hadn\’t thought about the connection between those two words before: image and imagination. That does seem like a way we participate in our likeness to God, by our creative imagination. Creative vs destructive– would that be like good vs evil? Nice new picture at the top of your blog. Where is it? I don\’t recognize the vineyards on that steep slope?
Wren,They are out in a steep valley somewhere up the Walla Walla River Rd., I think.CP
This post is marvelous! It gives me courage to continue my quest for creativity in my own ways.The image and imagination are powerful when we remember to link them with God\’s love for us.