The imagination is a discovery faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new.
Thomas Merton
Image source:
Jae-Im Kim We Are God’s Co-workers
“Imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown”. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The imagination does not explain, but evokes.
What is being called out from you at present?
Is there an image which arises in you that somehow says something about your life at present?
As you sit with your image, let it speak to you,
form you.
Cardinal Newman saw that we are moved to act not by ideas, but by what seizes our imaginations.
What images do you live by?
A poor, negative self-image robs us of vitality. A healthy, positive image moves us on. Images are at the heart of living with hope. Jesus imagined the world other than it is. He called it the Kingdom or the Reign of God.
The images in this post are from the Korean artist Jae-Im Kim. The image at the top of the post is called Garden of Eden.
Jae-Im Kim belongs to the first generation of Korean abstract expressionists: as a lyric abstract expressionist, her work is largely inspired by “the dance of the spirit,” and a cheerful contemplative spirituality. Her gestural paintings and torn-paper collages are derivative of her training in oriental calligraphy, dance and music. Inspired by the expression of the sacred and the conceptual, her works radiate a truly captivating energy that is vibrant and chromatic, full of rhythm and melody.
Source: Exhibition notes from the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University.
For more images of the work of Jae-Im Kim visit the Overseas Ministry Study Centre
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
