Prayer, meditation, and imagination

Meditative prayer, which my 5th graders love so much, asks you to use your imagination.  When we pray the rosary, we do this.  We think about the mystery, we imagine the mystery, we let our mind’s exploration of the mystery show us things we hadn’t seen before.

But if you have fallen into the hands of weirdness before, you can become scared of imagination.  When someone says “It is okay to use your imagination to help you pray”, we fear what they mean is “it’s okay to make up pretend stuff about God, or whatever it is you choose to believe that suits your fancies”.

No.  Not that.

But abuse does not disprove right use.

Father L. makes the case for right use of imagination. Go read.  It’s not just me and my woozy liberal friends* making this stuff up.  But for goodness sakes if it makes you nervous, just stick to the rosary for a start.   About as good a ground for rehabilitating your imagination as you could hope.

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*Ahem.  I’m not claiming me or my meditative-prayer liking mentors in the catechetical hierarchy are in fact woozy liberals.  Which would be laughable.  I’m saying, maybe when you see me post about these things, you fear that is what we are.  Nope.  Not.  But yeah, I will totally, yes TOTALLY lead a room full of ten-year-olds through a meditation on the gifts of the Trinity as explained in the Apostle’s Creed.  Salvation, all that.  With candles. And reflective music.

It’s almost as if kids want to spend time with Jesus.  Cultivate a prayer life.  Go figure.