BY CLAY CLARKSON
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. Henry David Thoreau
There is a language of imagination. Let’s call it imaginationish.
It’s not actually a language, but more of a universal dialect. It is using words to describe things that the eye does not see, the ear does not hear, the senses do not sense.
We always knew when our children were speaking imaginationish. They would hear a symphony and begin to describe a forest teeming with life and mystery. They would look at a painting and walk into its colors and lines as they narrated a story of their journey. They would watch a movie and begin to think out loud about the deeper spiritual meanings of scenes and symbols.
We never sat down and created a plan to make our children imaginative and creative. We did, though, deliberately create an atmosphere in our home that was rich in spoken and printed words—reading lots of books, discussing lots of topics, experiencing many forms of art and creativity. It was the air they breathed in our home—they inhaled it to fill their curious lungs, it oxygenated the verbal blood that fed their creative brains, and they exhaled it as the language of imagination. Call it immersion learning, I guess.
If there is such a thing as imaginationish, it isn’t learned from a workbook. It is grown and cultivated at home in a print-rich environment and verbally-enriched atmosphere, and it is fed with abundant and nutritious words. God—who is the Word, and created us to be people of his Word and of words—has given parents the privilege to create that creative ecosystem. It all starts with words.
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