"the word for world is imagination"*

The above quote caught my attention on my drive home from Whatever tonight. After watching part 1 of Practising the Presence of God by Brian McLaren, we chatted about that illusive connection feeling. I call that feeling joy, imagination, flash, spark, or whatever else catches my fancy at the time it occurs. I remember reading C.S. Lewis' book "Surprised by Joy" a number of years back and being filled with yearning and remembrance at his descriptions of the joy moments.

For me, the moments are as much physical as they are spiritual. My vision gets sharper and brighter. Time seems to slow down. A searing sensation in my brain seems to lock the moments deep inside. My heart slows down and then thumps rapidly. I sigh.

A line of McLaren's caught my imagination tonight. Reading from his upcoming book A Generous Orthodoxy, he stated that no matter how exuberantly he danced or sang to express this connection (my joy), it would be inadequate to express the depths of the experience. I've never been one for heaven talk or Revelations peering, but my joy moments give me a foretaste and certainty of the jewelled reality. I know it with all my being.

World and imagination are both integral parts of the joy moments. The feeling of limitless creativity existing in the richest, deepest, fullest, wholest world. That is my joy.

*A quote from the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, currently playing on cbc Radio One Ideas