About ten years ago, our septic system started leaking and after the septic crew tore up the lawn under the great ash tree (to connect the underground boxes that had never been connected), I sat on the back porch surveying the BIG mess and just cried. It would take me years, going at the speed most improvements take within the system of the Main’s family schedule, to make things right. I was overwhelmed with the thought of the effort.
Then one morning, I looked at the mounds of overturned clay (we live on a nasty streak that has demanded I build my own black soil) and thought, “Well, OK. Why not turn those mounds into a spring garden?” I moved the 10 peonies bushes, piled on black soil, added some grass and variegated hostas, and over the next decade, cultivated a rather lovely garden where there had formerly been piles of despair.
This took some imagination to see beauty instead of desolation. To me, that is the role of the artist, to imagine what could be.
There are some people, many of them well-meaning Christian folk who think the imagination is a bad thing. To me, I don’t know how any of us go through life without an imagination. How can a cook plan a lovely meal for family or for guests without imagining what it will look and taste like?
How can a decorator redesign the look of a home without imagination? How can a farmer plant vegetable gardens without imagination regarding a harvest to come? More importantly, how can we become intimate with a God we cannot see without imagining his personality and his characteristics and his everlasting love working in our lives as well as the life of the world?
Imagination is essential. I looked at the devastated mounds of lawn in my back yard and imagined that a beautiful garden might exist under the ash tree.
One day some thirty years ago, I also imagined that a book (eventually to become three books) could captivate readers with the scriptural concepts of the Kingdom of God told in literary formats. Those books became The Kingdom Tales trilogy and have brought both tears and delight (not to mention) to the minds of readers.
Imagination (particularly one that becomes persuaded and informed by holiness) is essential.
We are mounting a Kickstarter Campaign to raise funds to revise, re-illustrate (with multi-ethnic characters) and re-publish these award-winning books Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. Without imagination, great literature of any kind, would not exist. It also takes imagination to conceive of a campaign that will provide some $22,500 to reach this goal.
Can you help us by becoming a Backer (we have the imagination to believe that several thousand people will support this effort)? The Backer levels go from $3 to several hundred dollars. All the levels are basically pre-orders that provide the funds for the republishing campaign. Check out our Kickstarter page.
All it takes is a little imagination to create beautiful things in the world.
Karen Mains
The “imagination” garden this spring/summer as seen from David Mains upstairs study window.
