Sacrament of Imagination

 “…he marries heaven and earth in the church of ordinary life, here where we all are, with the sacrament of the imagination.” Roger Housden

The quote above was written by Roger Housden about a poem describing an ecstatic experience, albeit in ordinary life, in fact on a cold, snowy day sitting in an old chair by a stove.

The phrase “sacrament of the imagination” caught me up short. It seemed so full of possibility and hope. Perhaps grace invisible and eternally gifted can be glimpsed, caught, construed in a moment of imagination. 

What is actual or real in a physical sense becomes less inspiring than what is felt and discerned. What is factual and reportable becomes fodder for what might be as our imaginations transport us from chaos to peace, from disease to ease. 

These are Velveteen Rabbit like thoughts, of true reality versus socially constructed acceptability. I find it quite reassuring to sit with grace and invite my imagination to sing. In that singing imagination grace becomes felt and as real as the colors of dawn's light, which is of course that marriage of heaven and earth of which the poet speaks.