imagining
imagery, metaphor & meaning as practice
A picture is worth a thousand words.
We all know the saying. But it is one of the truest things I have found in therapy.
An image can get to the heart of a matter far quicker than explanation. Someone can describe a situation carefully for weeks, and then one day there is a picture—a swan in a storm, say, gliding along quite composed while everything beneath the surface works furiously against the weather—and there it is. Finally, we can see the paradox of trying to remain unaffected by something that would more than justify being affected.
And once we can see a thing, we can face it. Once we have faced it, we can decide how to relate to it. Whether to make peace with it, or rewrite it entirely.
This is not only something I have found as a therapist. It is how I have always thought, and prayed, and written. This page is where I share my own testaments to imagery, metaphor and meaning.
imagery, meaning & metaphor as practice
mere imaginings
Mere Imaginings is a series of twelve contemplative essays writing from within the biblical imagination. Each one begins with a verse and, inside it, a single word in the language it was first written in — Hebrew or Greek — because language is the door. From there it unfolds into whatever the picture already encoded in that word opens up. The Hebrew for hope, tiqvah, carries a cord pulled taut. Tenderheartedness, in the Greek, means good inward parts. Good viscera.
Twelve words. Twelve imaginings.
