Peering Thru Windows and Imagining

I recently finished two books dealing around the idea of  imagination.  The first: The Artisan Soul. The second: The Christian Imagination where C. S. Lewis said "We demand windows” when speaking of the role of literature in our lives. The question is asked; why occupy our time and hearts with accounts of characters and events that are not real?  Why enter vicariously into the fictional life of one who behaves in ways we wouldn't or shouldn't? Lewis explains that, "We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.... We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors...."  

I’ve been thinking that the literature I have loved most has taken me to windows of other worlds and other countries. Whether a Hobbit in the Shire or a rationalist in 19th century Russia, I have been a thousand characters in a thousand places and know more about myself and my world because of it. Crossing the bridge into Terabithia, a movie I ordered thru Netflex, a few weeks ago, I was introduced to another world and my own at once. The characters that came bounding out of Katherine Paterson's pages pulled me through their window and voiced my very first questions about life, death, and my own mortality. When I first followed Charles Wallace and Meg through a wrinkle in time and a window to Camazotz, I saw that darkness can overwhelm, and wondered at the idea that there is yet a light that cannot be overcome. Likewise, Lewis's own wardrobe provided the door that carried me to Narnia, a world that introduced the suggestion of signs and possibilities of another Kingdom within my own.  

The windows I have found in my literature has taught me to see windows in my own world. The stories and places that have pulled me in and spit me out again show me my own life as a unique story, my own place in a bigger story, my role in a better country.  Then again, I think a little deeper and just perhaps I demand windows into other worlds simply because I’m looking for another world, a world without suffering, or injustice, or my own pettiness.

My imagination kicks in this morning when reading the words of the psalmist when I think he voiced something similar about the world he was a part of and the world he imagined, "Hear my prayer, O LORD, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were" 39:12. Years later, the author of Hebrews wrote of Abraham, "By faith he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country... For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God" 11:8-10. God made humanity, Eilie Wesel once said, because God loves stories.  

As I shake myself in waking to life, whether in my own story or vicariously in other, I awaken with questions. "How did I get here?"  The Pevensie children asked with good reason. "And why are we here?" Of course, they got to Narnia through a wardrobe, but how they didn't know. And what did it all mean? I once again find myself floored with the same questions of my own world: How did I get here? Why am I here? And what is the point of it all?

But, I have come to realize that my questions of this world are as valid as questions of any other. Had the Pevensies' settled into Narnia without asking questions such as these, a great deal of the story would have been incomplete. Likewise, Annie Dillard in her book of thirty years, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,  writes of life in this place where, at times, I have found myself; "Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, even if we can't learn why." I could go along in this world, just settle in and go about living comme ci comme ca. But what crucial part of the story will I miss by doing so?

Almighty Father, I believe the story You have written is one that imagines this world where there are windows and doors that open to what I refer to as the Kingdom of God all around me—here and now and coming. There are places where heaven and earth meet at great crossroads, moments when I am given opportunities to see things beyond myself, to see things as they really are. I believe You are always leading me toward the many-roomed house Christ left me to imagine. I commit, this morning and the beginning of each morning in the future of taking the time to explore and enjoy my neighborhood.