The human imagination gazes upon infinite possibilities. In this gaze, it may, if directed upwards, be filled with the vision of God, and so be receptive. Or it may look upon the world and recognize in it the created potential for making, and so actively mold the world. In The Cultivating Imagination, we will explore this nexus. On the one hand, these reflections aim to facilitate our openness to the sweet influence of divine grace raining down upon us. On the other, they are directed at the ways we work the land (of our world, societies, families, and hearts) to create desire paths that allow grace to more effectively water the land. In these two ways, the imagination fulfills the twin duties of love to God and neighbor.
Christmas is the time of receiving. It is this that we image, however brokenly, in the giving of presents. For while there are no shortage of well-meaning folk who will tell us that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and while we must affirm that they are right if the goal is the development of the Christlike spirit, nevertheless, it is not giving that robs tens of millions of children of their sleep on that longest night of the year. No, what keeps them awake, straining not only their ears but every fiber of their youthful longing for the sounds of joy being delivered in the middle of the night, is the blessing of received gifts.
This blessed joy in the gift received is a state that is fitting and proper to creatures. For the first truth of our being is that we have a being that we did nothing to acquire and about which we were not consulted. And the second truth of our being is that we are embedded in a world from which we cannot help but receive, and from which we must receive if we are to go on living. Receptivity is the natural state of the creature.
Well, if we are receivers, then God is the giver par excellence. He gave existence and a world to us at creation, he gave a destiny to us in the covenants, and what we had so foolishly thrown away in our rebellion He returned in His work of redemption. As if all that were not enough, He gives us a brighter destiny in the consummation of all things.
What the Lord gives whenever the Lord gives is Himself. This might not be obvious at first, because His gifts have so very many forms: The love of mother and father, friend and sibling, spouse and self; the rich world of visible things that delight our sense of sight with forest and mountain, vale and lake, stars and galaxies, and the unfathomably curious and seemingly inexhaustible parade of animal species; the wild array of smells, the riot of tastes, surfaces both hard and unyielding and softer than first love, and the heartachingly powerful strains of music that play our souls as if we were the instruments. All of these things are gifts of God, and yet none of them is God.
And yet in each one of them, what we encounter that strikes us with the immediate, undeniable, and beloved demand of beauty is God in them, the way in which they, by being nothing other than what they are, resemble and make known the divine source of all being.
Now, it matters very much how we receive a gift: A gift received in gratitude and humility is not only more satisfying to the giver than one that is treated as owed, but it is also more fully received, because it is received precisely as gift. If you pay me money that you owe me, I will be grateful, but only with the sort of gratitude that is pleased at seeing the right order of things restored. But if you give me money that you do not owe me, and on which I have no claim, then my gratitude is deeper precisely because your act of giving is deeper: it does not represent the balancing of the scales, but an abundant overflow that communicates to me the depth of your regard for me and affirms my value as a person and the value you place on our relationship. This is why that prince of Christian hymns, “Joy to the World,” counsels us to prepare our hearts: because it is the prepared heart that is most free to receive the gift as gift, to recognize the wild excess and unexpectedness of the gift.
But how do we do this? This is where the imagination, as the organ of possibility, comes into play. For the more convinced we are that we know the boundaries of the possible, the less prepared we are to receive something that exceeds our expectations. When someone tells me that they have seen a ghost, I am slow to believe them, because I believe that ghosts are either non-existent or exceedingly rare. Likewise, an Israel fed a steady diet of temporal expectations for the victory of the Messiah had trouble recognizing the one who was fulfilling their hopes in their midst at a level incomparably deeper and richer than the temporal.
Why is it that only a handful of wise men from the east recognize the significance of the Christmas star? Is it not because they were wise men? That is to say, is it not because they had devoted their lives to pursuing wisdom and to the study of the heavens, to considering the deeper transcendent meanings of things, and to trusting that the world is a wilder and more magical place than even they dreamt of in their philosophy? Because they were expert in possibilities not framed only by what they had experienced in the tiny circle of their homeland and its politics and culture, they did not balk at a journey across the world to a nation of no account in order to offer homage to a king from whom they could expect no personal benefit.
And so the preparation of one’s heart entails pursuing wisdom. But wisdom is proved right by all of her children, and so is not found only (or chiefly, these days) in astrological or philosophical studies. There is wisdom in stories, wisdom in music, wisdom in relationships, and above all, wisdom in the contemplation of the goodness and greatness of God. Wisdom moves beyond the specific instance to consider the general principles that guide behavior.
As such, wisdom is prepared not only for what has happened before, but also for what has in no way ever happened. For faced with what was but a moment ago unthinkable, it is wisdom that can select from the store of experience and offer analogs capable of guiding action.
When I was a young Christian, I spent a lot of time in stories of martyrs, especially those martyrs who had faced terrible torture and execution. I not only studied their stories, I spent time trying to imagine what it would be like to experience that suffering. This was not because I am a masochist; on the contrary, I am such a creature of pleasure that it is a continual barrier to the Spirit’s work of sanctification in me. Rather, I took it as given that I might be asked to suffer for the faith at some point, and it seemed to me that by thinking about such suffering ahead of time, I might, as it were, forearm myself with fortitude for the real thing. I cannot tell you if it will make my physical suffering easier to bear, or make me less likely to deny my Lord under extreme torture, as things have not yet come to that pass. However, I can say that in lesser challenges and suffering it has proved useful. But what was this exercise if not the application of the imagination to the multiplication of experience so that deeper wisdom might emerge?
There was another group who showed up to pay their respects to the infant divinity, namely the shepherds. These shepherds did not, presumably, spend their days reflecting on the significance of astral motions or disputing the nature of kingship; they spent their days watching the sheep, evaluating pasturelands, and so on. But this did not disqualify them for the wonder of wonders. But look what it took: the greatest rock concert in history, an angel rave that must have left them unable to see in the darkness for quite some time afterwards.
The Lord will come, and He may make His coming known to whomever He wishes; but of all those in Israel, it was only a handful of shepherds, a skeptical priest, a virgin and her betrothed, and an old man and woman at the temple who were let in to the mystery. And of those, the Blessed Virgin, Simeon, and Anna had prepared their hearts for many years, and Joseph and Zechariah were largely told as a matter of course, because they were need-to-know.
The safe road, then, is to prepare Him room. Let this be our call and our summons: to return to the manifold gifts of God that have been poured into creation with a liberal prodigality of which only He who owns all is capable; let us return to them in order to study His gift-giving, and how in each of these gifts He gives Himself. The gratitude and wonder we feel in the face of such a blessed and blessing display of power will expand our hearts, making room for us to receive ever more of Him.
The featured image, “Christmas Package,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Junius Johnson is a scholar in the fields of historical and philosophical theology and has published four books in those areas. He is also a lover of story, passionate about beauty and the imagination, a seeker of wonder, a musician, and a deeply flawed sinner daily leaning on the grace of God in Christ. A lover of the Middle Ages, he especially loves to be transported to other worlds via fantasy, science fiction, and young adult literature. He teaches online enrichment courses for both children and adults in literature, theology, and Latin through Junius Johnson Academics.
Add a comment
0 Comments