Imaginative prayer: Spiritual practice spotlight.
We all have an imagination. Many times, our imagination has led us down treacherous roads—or our imagination wakes up when we’re actually deep in slumber. Sometimes it’s as mundane as thinking forward to the conversations we need to prepare for in our day, how a meeting might go or what we’ll have a taste for by dinnertime. All of this shows our capacity for imagination—to make things present to us in ways they actually aren’t—and this is a faculty, just like our intelligence, that we can use to encounter and be encountered by Jesus.
What is imaginative prayer?
Imaginative prayer is simply an exercise in which we use our imagination to create an experience for God to share with us. A wonderful thing about how our minds work in imagination is that it’s not merely a “brain” exercise—when we imagine something we’re frightened of, our heart rate might go up, and when we imagine being held by someone we love, we might notice calm come over our bodies or longing aching in our heart. In other words, imagination lets us not just think about something but actually experience it. So it is with imaginative prayer.
A way to experience our theology.
To that end, we can use imaginative prayer to create a personal experience of our theology. Often, we might say that I know something “in my head” (like God sees me apart from my mistakes) but I can’t seem to learn it “in my heart.” Imaginative prayer is designed to teach our hearts and our bodies the lived theology of who God is and how God loves us by creating a concrete memory of a real experience. And this can be both deeply healing and deeply formative.
This can take many forms—whether it’s entering a scene straight form Scripture (such as standing in the place of Blind Bartimaeus asking to be healed) or creating a unique scene (such traveling with Jesus to a significant place or time in your past). It can be real or fictional, historical or future-facing.
An experience of something already true.
Sometimes this can feel slippery for someone. Are we making Jesus a puppet in our imagination? How can we tell what’s Jesus speaking and what’s just us? These are fair questions. As may become clearer, easily avoiding these pitfalls has everything to do with how we practice these exercises. But something key for us to keep in mind is this:
Imagining something doesn’t mean it’s real, and imagining something doesn’t mean it’s not real. We can take these pressures off our imaginative prayer from the start; we’re not looking for it to reveal anything new but to let us experience something true. What imagination does is create a real experience—and it’s this experience we always invite the Holy Spirit to lead us in from the beginning and bring back to the revealed God in the end.
How to practice imaginative prayer.
As we look to begin an imaginative prayer, it’s good to first notice and let go of any expectations. If I’m doing this to hear God tell me what I should choose in discernment, I’m likely setting myself up for frustration. But I do well to also let go of any expectations of myself and what it looks like to do this “well.” For example, many of us don’t have strong visual imaginations, but we might have stronger auditory (sound) or kinesthetic/tactile (felt) imaginations. Rather than holding or limiting ourselves to any of categories, keep in mind simply that you can experience a scene numerous ways, even if you find it difficult to “picture” anything in your mind’s eye. Just notice what does come through—how the voices might sound, how a touch might feel, what’s going on inside of your body.
Then, find a quiet, dedicated space and time, where you can sit comfortably without risk of dozing.
1. Invite.
Invite the Holy Spirit to accompany you in your space of prayer and to release and lead your imagination. God is perfectly able to do this without invitation, but it’s a helpful reminder to us that we’re trusting God here more than our own faculties. After all, my image of God can time-to-time get twisted, and nobody can deceive me like me. Anything we encounter in our imagination is subject to testing against who God is revealed to be in Scripture and in the life of faith—but we help ourselves by naming from the start that this is from God’s prerogative, not ours, and by taking a posture of receptivity and trust rather than activity and agenda.
We can also pray that the Holy Spirit would place us in the scene wherever God desires.
2. Compose.
In your interior senses (your mind’s eye, ear, gut, whatever), you might give yourself some basic starting cues. Think of this as just setting the stage, lowering the backdrop. If you intend to meet Jesus in a story from the Gospels, you’ll want to read the passage slowly and get a sense of where it is and what’s happening—without fretting about historical details. (If it’s easiest to picture Peter in a row boat, go with that, rather than trying to work out what a 1st century fishing vessel looked like.) If you intend to meet Jesus in a favorite park, for example, first picture that place in your mind.
From this starter setting, allow it to flesh out or unfold around you, without working at it. We can do this by simply noticing. Nothing might be there until you notice it. For example, as you imagine being in that scene:
What sounds might you hear? Birds? The murmuring of a crowd? Something else?
What might the air feel like? Dry and hot in the streets of Jerusalem? Cool and tense in the Gethsemane evening?
What can you see? The tall trees of your grandmother’s yard? Jesus but shadowy and hard to see his face?
If there are lots of “black” or fuzzy or otherwise incomplete bits, allow yourself not to worry about it. This isn’t an immersive VR program; it’s just your imaginative faculties, aided by the Holy Spirit, helping to make present to you what might be significant for this experience. Many details aren’t.
Finally, check in with yourself. We’re almost ready to press “play.” Give yourself a baseline. What are you feeling? What’s going on inside of you? What do you notice in you?
3. Play.
Action! If you’re imagining a scene from Scripture—or if you’re following a guided exercise—you have a script or prompts you can follow. You can simply watch as the characters play their roles, or you can imagine yourself in the shoes of someone in the passage. At the same time, you’re free to break from the action at any point, because it’s important to ultimately be you in this experience; if you take the place of Bartimaeus being asked by Jesus “What do you want me to do for you?” notice how you respond, even if it’s to dodge the question or turn and run the other direction. This is the point of the exercise, not doing it “right” or “perfectly.”
If you’re doing a free exercise, on the other hand, just as when you allowed your imagination to compose the scene around you, you can allow your imagination to carry the scene forward. In giving your imagination permission to do this, what’s important to remember is that your imagination isn’t merely your intellect willing a story into existence; your imagination is informed by the images of Scripture and the experiences of Jesus’ love in your life. Jesus isn’t a puppet with your imagination pulling the strings; Jesus is himself being Jesus in your imagination. Let’s look at an example.
Let’s say you want to imagine sitting on a bench with Jesus. OK, the picture’s more or less there. But now what? Pretty boring. You both just sit there. (Interesting, notice that you imagine Jesus sitting there and not walking away or leaning his head on your shoulder or doing a jig to entertain you.)
So what would you like to say to Jesus in this moment? Imagine saying it. Good. Now how does Jesus respond?
Often we might want to say, “I don’t know what Jesus would say,” but that’s answering the wrong question. The question is what does Jesus say in your imagination. Just like when we didn’t hear anything in our imagination until we noticed if we heard something, notice it. Take a swing. Risk being wrong.
Suppose you notice imagining Jesus responding by rolling his eyes and leaving. Oops, something went wrong—how interesting, though, because that probably from somewhere—but not a worry, try again. Now maybe you notice Jesus say, “I know how difficult this season is for you.” How does that one feel? Does it ring true enough to play with? How do you respond? Stay with it.
We can trust our imagination too much or too little, so the trick is play. Allow yourself to hold everything loosely and allow there to be some play in your holding of it. And again, if Jesus appears in any way questionable in your imagination, this too reveals something helpful without obligating us to make it gospel and work it into our belief system; we can go on from here to talk with God about why we might imagine Jesus to be some way that doesn’t square with Scripture or doesn’t sit right with us. Just as much, we can talk with God about was good and revealing of truth to us, truth we needed to experience.
4. Engage.
The imaginative portion may be the “meat” of an imaginative prayer practice, but that’s not its complete purpose. Prayer is most fruitful for us when it points to more prayer. Whatever our experience may have been in the play of imaginative prayer, this is our opportunity to spend time with God around it as with a friend—whether that’s with the Father, with Jesus or with the Holy Spirit.
Initially, you may wish just to linger, and I always encourage this. If you felt you have anything from God to “hold” loosely or to “savor,” do that. Allow the experience to sink a little deeper into your memory and wherever you feel it bodily. Allow yourself to experience being in no hurry to add words to the moment you’re sharing with God. Then, when you’re ready, do reflect with God on what that experience was. You may or may not have the sense of God responding back. You may have very few words at all. As always, as in all prayer, pray only to the extent you find yourself able, and that will be enough.
And as always, jotting down some short notes in a prayer journal is highly valuable.
Try it out.
If you’re just starting with an imaginative prayer practice, it may be best to begin with a guided exercise or a story from the gospels. This can give you clear rails to run on with plenty of room to play in between the guide posts. One of the most popular stories to use is the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15; you might try entering this passage from several different points—as an observer following close behind the action, as the younger son, as the older son, even as the father. What do you notice? How do you find yourself wanting to respond to each of the characters? How does God respond to you?