“When our ancestors spoke of heaven,
they were speaking of this moment.
When they went on about nirvana
they imagined a time like this.
When they sang of paradise,
it was this morning they imagined.” -Marc Belletini, from “In Heaven”
What is the paradise you can imagine today?
“When I was small and just learning how to do life in my body, I didn’t hesitate, didn’t hold back, didn’t worry how it would look, didn’t look for cues or ask for a line. My imagination ruled… I was entirely free to be, driven by the innovation my body inspired. This is the wild emancipation I wish for all of us—a world where we are all free to be, to move, to exist in our bodies without shame; a world that isn’t interested in making all of its humans operate in the exact same way; a world that instead strives to invite more, include more, imagine more.That world sees the humans existing on the margins and says, You have what we want! What barriers can we remove so we can have you around? What do you need? How can we make that happen? –Rebekah Taussig, from Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body
What barriers can we remove to free the possibilities for your body?
Using your imagination allows you to engage with your beliefs in creative, personal ways. Whether through prayer, meditation, or everyday life, imagination helps open new doors to explore the divine, connect with the world, and grow spiritually. -Katherine Hofmann (CLF)
How does imagination help you on your spiritual journey?
When I do a thing – when I feel accomplished – I typically reflect on the tasks I have completed within the timeframe that I identified and feel proud of myself for that. While I certainly should be proud of those parts of accomplishing something, I need to remember to reflect on and be proud of the imagination it took to even dream that goal in the first place. -Jody Malloy (CLF)
When was the last time you reflected on the way imagination played on a role in your accomplishments?
When I think about imagination, I find myself returning to the power of words, the power of names. Take Blue. It’s the last color to appear in many languages, including Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew. Many ancient civilizations had no word at all for the color blue, and without the word to lead to the thought, they couldn’t differentiate it from other colors (why Homer classically refers to the “wine-dark sea”). Words are the building blocks for ideas, which in turn are the blueprints with which we recreate the world in our mind, imagining it. How crucial it is, then, that we arm ourselves with words and ideas that help us see more clearly the world in which we want to live. -Paul Spanagel (CLF)
What are the words you use for the things you imagine?
