By Margaret Silf
What you see is never all you get. This is especially true in the realm of spirituality. In fact, faith is all about trusting a mystery you don’t see.
So what could bridge that gap between what we perceive with our senses and the reality far greater than our rational minds? For me the answer is imagination. And no one has helped me to discover the spiritual power of imagination more than our friend St. Ignatius, or López as I prefer to call him.
When I use my imagination in prayer and reflection, I glimpse a deeper reality beneath my everyday experience. It’s like the difference between knowing the facts about someone and actually spending quality time with them, as I did in writing Just Call Me López. Or it’s like Jesus pointing to whatever is happening, and saying: “Look at this. This shows you what the reign of God is like.”
Imagination can turn ordinary facts into powerful parables. It can lead us deep inside the visible realities into the sacred mystery that makes those realities true.
Margaret Silf travels widely in her work as a retreat director and speaker on Ignatian spirituality. She is the author of many books, including Just Call Me López, Simple Faith, and The Other Side of Chaos.
