But Is It Real?

Many Christmas stories raise the question of otherworldly belief: in the Christ Child born in a stable, in angels and a guiding star and wise men, in Santa Claus squeezing down the chimney with a bag full of presents that are just what we want as if Santa had read our letter. In fact, nobody believes that fiction except kids who are too young to understand that grownups like to pretend while they wait for spring.

If we are conflicted about believing what isn't real, it may be that we think of reality and imagination as separate things. They are not. Imagination is an emergent and evolved feature of reality, with real implications that we cannot avoid. For better or worse, imagination has transformed empires and nations, grasslands and forests, lakes and oceans, deserts and polar ice, the atmosphere, outer space even to the moon and beyond.

If children have visions of sugar plums, someone will make them so children can have sugar plums. Without imagination we are stuck in a reality without sugar plums. Through imagination we participate in turning What-Is-Now into What-May-Be. Along the way, we will get some things wrong as the ancestors often did. Right or wrong, our story will inform the dreams of our children and their children so they can do better than we have done. That is what's really real, imagining a better reality and making it happen.

And that is my story for a holy winter night.
Merry Christmas.

*******************

Thanks to JG for pointing my imagination in this direction.