Big Mamma, the tall one of the two grandparents who was my daddy’s mom, lived on Watkins Street and her parcel of land was a thin rectangle with the narrow side to the street. The length of it followed along behind the homes on West Cooper Street that joined Hatchie Street where a little mom and pop grocery conveniently provided for the neighbors. The intersection was almost a triangle with Watkins which angled off on its own compass bearing. The land offered a slope from a tree line to a row of backyards and its end was no wider than a regular lot. They often rented the little strip to a farmer who planted cotton which was still handpicked because it was inaccessible to picking machines. A massive oak shaded the entire southside from any glimmer of sunshine. There was another large oak just outside the backdoor which had purple iris growing around the trunk with such bright purple velvet peddles that iris is still my favorite. I often played in the loose soil that provided nourishment to the flower.
Beyond the fence marking off the backyard from the snowlike cotton plants was an ancient pear tree that offered its fruit which never really got the chance to ripen because small reaching finders cannot wait on nature to soften its favors. In the front yard there was a holly tree that swept the ground with prickly points as sharp as pins so that no grass carpeted the ground beneath it. I thought it was the largest a holly tree could possibly be until I was a little older and discovered one on the property of a family friend who allowed me to climb it fifty feet high to gather its holly to adorn the window seals of our home for Christmas each year.
My favorite tree in the yard was a dogwood with low limbs reaching down to offer to carry my lite trunk on its branches into worlds only mapped by the imagination. The backyard to the last house at the end of the cotton field was owned by an electrician. The switch boxes, wiring remainders, and nameless components – against the consistent complaint of the hoarder – provided the hardware for me to build a spaceship in my little dogwood wonderland where I visited planets in galaxies beyond the stars. It was a whirling and spinning spectacle that lifted off separating from its root and effortlessly leaving earth and reality. Timeless spans stretched over afternoons of daydreams lost in the wonder of mental delight.
In the New Testament there is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians and it contains a few of the most beautiful prayers in the Bible. In one of them Paul prays for the imagination, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength” (1:18-19 CSB). The “eyes of the heart” is a metaphor for the imagination (Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age by Justin Ariel Bailey, pg 99). The Bible shows how the imagination can be corrupted by sin (Romans 1); but it also speaks of it in terms of the “heart” and in this prayer the heart has “eyes’ and these eyes are the imagination.
The eyes of a child’s heart reach to the stars, live in imaginative storylands that turn boxes into forts or car garages, and see scrapes in the dirt to be highways across playful horizons. When they were bored, I taught my children to take their imaginations out of their pockets and use them. We would practice by reaching into our pockets. We would pull our hands out with what only the eyes of the heart could see. That’s what God wants from me. He wants me to take a little time to climb a spaceship tree so I can enjoy the beauty of His calling on me. He wants me to imagine with the mind’s eye, scenes where I am serving him in the might of his immeasurable power and the “working of his strength”. He wants me to envision his inheritance as rich and fulfilling an image as any good dream can assemble. Jesus wants me to mentally practice his joy and the steps I will follow when I exit the sanctuary of my thoughts.
Stephen Williams