A Different Thread

I’ve been blessed – and cursed – with a wonderful imagination. Through my imagination, I’ve been able to have a career in a variety of creative roles, imagining everything from cute illustrations that a commercial audience would love to whole new businesses, a home remodel and even the creation of animated TV shows.

But a funny thing about imaginations – while sometimes they serve you quite well, they can just as easily take off on their own to create beautiful and impossible flights of fancy – or create nightmares. My mind has been going towards the nightmare side of things since late last year for some reason.

But a funny thing happened this week. I caught myself nurturing a thread of news I had stuck in my mind into an even bigger imagined nightmare. I was watching that thread begin to unfold in my mind’s eye - until I stopped myself. And began to consciously try to begin to imagine a different twist in that imagined story. A different kind of vision. A new thread with a hero. Goodness getting some traction, and unfolding into a triumph. A different possible ending and future.

There is no certain path to the future. We can only imagine the best into being by imagining that path, and then following the path we have imagined to make it real.

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile

the moment a single man contemplates it,

bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Holy one, help us to imagine the world as you have intended it to be, and to bring it into being. Amen.

Diana is a founding member of Peace Church, and a career creative director and art director who loves to imagine everything from what’s for dinner to her next DIY project.