A rich, well-fed spiritual life begins with your active imagination engaged in scenes of God’s creation and life-thriving thoughts! Using our imagination does not mean living a fantasy life and shutting out reality. Rather, it simple asks that we go beyond reality and dream the unseen. In fact, many saints ask: How can we pray without an effervescent imagination?

Isn’t that when faith thrives? Do not married couples use their imagination when they exchange nuptial vows? Since they cannot imagine their future, they cannot see it. Yet, they promise to love and cherish each other anyway. It is imagination which fosters their trust in the other.

Albert Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge, it is the language of the soul.” When a young mother asked him what she should read to her son, Einstein replied: “Fairy Tales.”   She asked, “And then what?” Einstein responded: “More fairy tales.” In other words, to live a thriving and adventurous spiritual life, you need to keep moving up your hill of prayer. When you reach one summit, head towards the next!

With faith to guide you as you scale each mountain, you are becoming more than you are, and moving closer to becoming who God intended you to become.

Didn’t God’s great imagination develop his plan of creation? It is his dream in which we are all still the most important part! Scripture tells us God put our first parents into a beautiful garden, overflowing with beauty.

Saint Francis de Sales had the opportunity of growing up surrounded by the same kind of beauty. While admiring a backdrop of Swiss Alps, he sat meditatively near the glimmering Annecy Lake which maintains a natural turquoise hue.

De Sales loved this blue green lake with the magnificent reflection of surrounding ragged Alps in the waters. It fed his imagination and his love for his creator. Seeing the beauty of the world around us leads us little by little to finding God within us, he wrote in his book, Treatise on the Love of God.

We too can do the same thing strolling under the rapture of a breathtaking sunset. In such a moment, we can see and know God. And most especially, to thank him for making the sunset so magnificent a gift for you and everyone who is enjoying it with you.

Viewing a beautiful, colorful sunset is the perfect way to end the day with what an active imagination come conjure up. This is especially true if our day was “one of those days” needing a pick me up. God knows this! And that is why he made sunsets so spectacular to enjoy. As G. K. Chesterton wrote: “That after the first sunset: God said everyday—'Do it again to the sun and every night. Do it again to the moon!’”  

Beauty ranges from the tiny wing flutter of a Monarch butterfly to the overwhelming lure of the depth and breadth of the Grand Canyon view! Beauty is God’s never-ending slide show of scenery, delight, color, sparkle, dazzle, which God gives to tickle and excite our imagination. Free your imagination and dive in. You are guaranteed to experience a joy filled, animated spiritual life every day!