It is dark and the only light in your room comes from the full moon peaking through the curtains. There are shadows on the wall and you think you hear something living in the closet. You bear it all bravely for another full minute or so but then discretion becomes the better part of valor and you howl for your mommy. In she comes as she always does offering comfort and assurance.

"It is only your imagination," she says. "It is only your imagination getting the best of you." She smiles and tucks you back in bed and with a quiet kiss you peacefully slide into slumber.

Unfortunately, such kindness also marks the start of something both sad and sinister. It is a process of destruction that most of us still haven’t recovered from. Whispered within those words of midnight comfort was the implication that our imagination was, if not bad, then at least foolish. Despite the best of intentions, Mommy made light of what was certainly real to us, even a kind of religious experience. "It is just your imagination," she says, and whether we knew it or not, a two-edged sword just sliced through our soul.

Somewhere along the line, imagination began to be belittled. Somewhere in the course of our social, cultural, religious history, imagination with all its beautiful ramifications became a subject of ridicule and scorn. It was then that our damnation began. The sad history of Protestant Christianity has often been a kind of pagan worship of the facts. During the first few years of the Reformation, religious statues were destroyed and stained glass windows were shattered...anything that hinted of imagination was condemned and ridiculed as papist and pagan. The Bible became our god and literalism took root where it continues to bear its ugly fruit.

I like what Karl Barth once said, "I take my Bible too seriously to take it literally." The Bible and our ancient religious heritage celebrated imagination. It was a way of discovering and proclaiming the truth.

Why, then, do we now dismiss it so readily? Our failure to celebrate the gift of imagination has done grievous damage to our souls and hampered our spiritual development.

I once heard Madeline L’Engle answer a question by stating boldly, "Truth is often greater than fact." I didn’t write it down in my notebook because I knew I’d never forget it.