Over the past few weeks I’ve been slowly reading George MacDonald’s 19th century book, Phantastes—with the hope that it would kindle my imagination.
The other day I had a moment. It began as I read the following paragraph—where the book’s protagonist, having picked up an evil shadow that brought death and diminishment upon whatever or whomever it fell, came across a miraculous sight while on his fairyland journey:
“Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child, with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the tube through which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing everywhere; the other that through which he looks when he combines into new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child's head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and delight, round crept from behind me the something dark, and the child stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from behind. The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a kaleidoscope. I sighed and departed.”
Taking in MacDonald’s imaginative brilliance, I recalled what C. S. Lewis wrote about his experience reading this book; that it “baptized” his imagination. Then, another C. S. Lewis thought came to mind—words he wrote about the eternal splendour of human beings in his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal… it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…” (italics mine)
Then I saw a connection—was Lewis doing the same as MacDonald, just in the opposite direction? Where MacDonald saw human glory fade, Lewis saw it come to life. My imagination reeled as I wondered if it was MacDonald’s words that inspired Lewis’s. Was it this scene in Phantastes that kindled Lewis’s immortal human vision in The Weight of Glory?
Pondering that connection, I saw my imagination at work. Seeing the line from MacDonald to Lewis, a line that started to be drawn by God at creation, and that will continue to be drawn for all eternity, I felt as though God was saying, “Your imagination is part of this line!”
For decades, I’ve been inspired by Lewis’s words, trying to remember who people really are whenever I meet them. But like the protagonist in MacDonald’s book, my shadow often gets in the way. No matter how hard I try, my perspective is skewed and I’m blind to the glory of the ordinary.
But still, I have moments—times when the extraordinary shines through. Because of these moments, I constantly yearn for more. Oh, that I could see the world as it is!
This inspires me to keep on looking for God’s glory in the world. I will never stop being thankful for the time God baptized my imagination 30 years ago—through a series of revelatory events that pulled back the veil for me. Having seen what I saw, all I want is to see it again—people for who they are, circumstances as they are held, and creation as it was originally made to be.
I want to be the kind of person who Jesus would say these words to:
“Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
Jesus in Matthew 13:16-17
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