We continue with another section of Walter Wink’s “The Human Being.”
Are we then, in the final analysis, simply creating God in our own image? Are we deluding ourselves by means of the imagination? We are not deluding ourselves, but it is “all our imagination.” That is the only way the experience of God happens. “Imagination does not [always] construct something unreal, but [sometimes] unveils the hidden reality,” writes Henry Corbin. “It is not that we personify, but that the epiphanies come as persons,” says James Hillman. In his play Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw pens a revealing exchange, which can be epitomized thus:
Joan: God speaks to me.
Robert: That’s just your imagination.
Joan: Of course. That’s how God speaks to me.
I like to use the expression “faithful imagination” when referring to the stories of the faith that we tell and read. Yes, our imagination may be way off. But that is all a part of the discernment of a community – to weigh whether something is a word/story that unveils the Reign of God or…is it another story that does not. Faithful imagination begins among faithful people and pulls us deeper into the expansiveness of God’s gracious acts. Therefore, one story may trigger other stories…those other stories that then arise from the faithful listeners may help to bring more depth and life into those first faithful stories. But when we are ruled by fear and anxiety that insists on a firm control of our storytelling, we miss out on the faithful dialogue that takes place when ordinary people lift their eyes to see how real our God can be in the middle of this day.
Connection: Sometimes our imagination is one way to see God’s Reign unfolding among us and we…are right in the middle of the life that takes place when God love bursts open our lives in this day.
By your gracious will, O God, you bring us to see what is not always available to us. You stretch us beyond our ways so that we might imagine how bountiful your love is when it is alive and present among us. Lead us into that reality in you grace. Amen.
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