… watching for the brushstrokes of God
Imagination is the ability to see beyond what is and sense the almost imperceptible gentle breezes of the spirit. The artist sees a painting where there is only an empty canvas, a sculpture where there is only a stone. The prophet imagines a world not yet visible, naming truth to live into God’s fullness.
How do you develop your imagination? What do you imagine?
“The greatest capacity of spiders, I have come to believe, is their intuition about space, their knack for seeing and understanding the nature of their environment, the contours and potentialities of a given place. Spiders must think strategically about space, how to cover it and how to create cross-linkages that stitch locations together into a net. And they must do this time and again, always at considerable risk and vulnerability to themselves.“ John Paul Lederach, Moral Imagination
What can we learn as we navigate current spaces?
I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
…As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
from “This World” by Mary Oliver
I have been noticing lots of spiderwebs lately all over the place. Less distracted, less traffic, slower pace? Have you noticed? What do they say to you? What shimmers?
O healing river, send down your waters,
send down your waters upon this land.
O healing river, send down your waters,
and wash the blood from off the sand.
.
This land is parching, this land is burning,
no seed is growing in the barren ground.
O healing river, send down your waters,
O healing river, send you waters down.
.
Let the seed of freedom awake and flourish,
let the deep roots nourish, let the tall stalks rise.
O healing river, send down your waters,
O healing river, from out of the skies.
Where do you notice healing flow? Where are parched places?
Jesus asked 307 questions, was asked 186 and answered three of them.
“ We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means that we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues and thanked God that he was not like other men.” Madeleine l’Engle
What questions are burning within you?
Someone had built a cairn at the beach. Cairns have been around for a long time, sometimes they are used to mark a trail, at other times they are placed as a memorial marker. Sometimes we yearn for some direction, a path to reveal itself. At other times we need to mark a point in our journey to remember, celebrate, grieve or simply to stop and rest.
What points in your journey have you marked or long to mark? What direction do you seek?
With the Eyes of the Heart 