Holy Imagination

To really grok this post, I urge you to listen to MercyMe's "Homesick", off the Undone album, which sort of inspired it.

Let me preface all of this by saying that the past couple of days have been really tough. As of last night, I discovered that I'm going to have to find a new home for myself and my four children, immediately. I have a few options: I can get a place to live in Florida, get a place to live in Virginia, or live in the house I already own in Virginia that I have been hoping to sell. However, none of these options is remotely ideal. Any option in Virginia will involve moving the kids to a new school, immediately, with only 8 weeks or so left in the school year. Florida will mean continuing to be financially very strapped as I wait for my house in Virginia to (hopefully) sell, having very little in the way of friends or support network, and generally being in a very tough spot. My family seem to think that I'm in the wrong, although I don't see how I could have done differently, and my ex-wife is continuing her pattern of adultery and indifference to the challenges involved in caring for the children. That's the bad news, and I could choose to dwell on that.

The good news, in a mundane sense, is probably a bit sparse. I have a good job, that will move with me wherever I go. I have a girlfriend in Tallahassee who is encouraging me to do whatever is best for the kids, unlimited. I have a house to move into, which has been prepared for sale and is a much nicer place than it used to be, and I've already identified a nanny/housekeeper for the Virginia house.

But ... the good news in a spiritual sense is enormous. I have a father, in heaven, who will always love me, always forgive me, always support me, and always care for me. I have four children, each of whom has a precious soul and all of whom seem to be developing a genuine love for the Lord. I am homesick, not because I have no home on earth, but because any home I had on earth has fallen so far short of the heavenly home which I eagerly await. I am loved, blessed, accepted, there is no condemnation for me because I am in Christ Jesus, and whatever my family may choose to say to me, I have a family in the Church (capitalization intentional) that is much grander than I can even imagine. "My present sufferings are not worthy of comparison with the glory that awaits me" (Romans 8 something, paraphrased)... "whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:50). Whatever balance I may feel in a mundane sense--however much I may feel that I'm put upon, put out, unfairly subjected to the troubles of this world--my status as a child of God overwhelms it. That is what I need to remember now, not all the problems. They'll work out: the challenge is to keep my eye on God and on those divine realities that are much more important than mere temporal troubles.

It occurs to me, at least for the moment, that the great challenge of actually living the Christian life with gusto is something which I'm going to call holy imagination. Holy imagination is that vision we have of divine realities which we cannot perceive directly. Anytime we stop and think about the divine realities that underly the mundane experience of "normal" life, we are engaging the holy imagination. Holy imagination is the imagination turned, by the power of the spirit, to the spiritual, imagination placed in the service of our faith. Without it, faith can never have any sort of passion; the best we can hope for is a sort of bland, lifeless hope, piously proclaimed but ultimately having no impact on our action or our lives. It is the holy imagination that causes us to glorify God and be thankful to him, even when we could find every excuse to deny him.

Holy imagination is our only defense against nihility -- those daily realities which would seem to disaffirm the hope at the core of our faith, death, pain, betrayal, suffering, legalism, hypocrisy. It takes those depressing, mundane realities and looks for the divine reality behind them. The alternative is the "vain imagination"--cynicism, pessimism, a sort of thinking that causes the "foolish heart to become darkened" (Romans 1.21 KJV). It calls us into the sublime, and away from the foolishness of the immediate.

So ... for me, the challenge is to remember this: there is a God, I am his child, he does love me, and he is on my side. None of this will change, nor can it change, because God is no Indian-giver. Present sufferings will simply make the future glory all the more dramatic.

Right? Somebody pinch me already .... my cynicism is getting me in trouble again.

So .. the holy imagination is much easier to talk about than to actually use. But I think it's nonetheless real, and something greatly to be desired.