In the conversation regarding the preference between knowledge and imagination, I find myself invariably entangled within imagination. Certainly not to the complete neglect of knowledge (that would be foolish) but if forced to make an irrevocable choice between the two, imagination wins every time (and twice on Sundays).

Fractals. That’s right. I said fractals. I can pour over fractals for hours. It’s not just fascination at the mathematical precision of what seems to be simultaneously random and symmetrical, it’s more about how they feel. When I look at a fractal, there is a distinct element of otherworldliness. There is a microscopic flicker of the capacity of perceiving dimensions beyond the four of this corporeal existence. There is the palpable suggestion that this world is much more than it appears.

Of course there are other, obvious works or results of imagination that have voice and resonance. Music, architecture, painting, web design, sculpture, quilting, soup can labels, and so on. All of these involve and engage imagination, but for me the queen mother of them all is story. Story, in the broadest stroke possible, is imagination’s daily bread. However, the kind of story that speaks to my soul at the deepest level is the story contained in the needle point of the very best of fantasy literature. Fantasy that approaches myth. And at the laser precise tip of the point of that needle is the faerie story. These are the stories that shatter my intellect and transform my perception.

When I read a story like the Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien or Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis or The Golden Key by George MacDonald, there is an inkling of how the inside of something can be bigger than the outside. There is a glimmer of how a thing can appear unremarkably simple yet contain and superintend complexities beyond comprehension. There is a faint whisper of the relationship between the finite and the infinite, of how good can be greater than evil, and how Love could conquer all. There is the vapor reflection that once upon a time One perished once and for all and He lives forever more.

I am not sophisticated. I am not learned. But at the core of my being I know that I am spirit and sometimes the universe moves within me. In these moments I begin to comprehend the voice of God. And I feel His breath.