Scene

We are called to imagine the scenes, and through our imagination to take part in them.

Virgin Mary Fresco (Lado Gudiashvilli)

When I was very young, I watched a film called “Ben-Hur”.  It was a marvellous movie, and I enjoyed watching it.  However, during the film, I was able to see leprosy for the first time.  Before that film I had no concept of how debilitating a disease like leprosy could be.  I was only very young when I watched the film and that, perhaps, aggravated my experience of it.  For weeks after watching that film I could not sleep at night.  I would sit next to my mother on her bed – the poor thing – and tell her that I was too afraid to sleep.

The main problem was not that I was afraid of anything happening to me, but I was afraid to think about how terrible life would be for those poor people affected by leprosy.  And this had a lasting impact on me.  I still remember the film very well and I can recall the facial expressions of the actors in that film as they discovered their illness.

When I was a little older I watched a movie about a ghost – not a horror film, but a suspenseful one.  It frightened me half to death.  I spent nights being unable to sleep because the concepts being explored in the film caused my already active imagination to go into overdrive.

Even as an adult, my husband will tell me to cover my eyes at certain parts of a film because he knows that I am sensitive to certain things that will cause me to feel certain uncomfortable things due to my over-active imagination.

We laugh about this very often – my husband and I – I am completely aware that this is very child-like of me, but this is what caused me to start thinking today.

You see, if I am able to place myself into the life and experience of a character in a film, then what is holding me back from placing myself into the experience of my God…?

This is what the Rosary asks us to do.  It is not a prayer of repetition as we have made it in the modern age where we are fixated on ticking boxes – one “Our Father”, ten “Hail Marys” and I buy a ticket to Heaven…  It is a slow meditation upon the life and death at key moments in Christ’s life as seem through the eyes of the Blessed Virgin…

We are called to imagine the scenes, and through our imagination to take part in them.

I am called to reflect on the sorrowful and joyful times of Christ’s earthly life and the ways that God the Son showed His power through Glorious and Luminous mysteries…

My strong suspicion is that God has given me this great gift of imagination and then allowed me to wait and see what I will do with it.  And I suspect that He has not seem very much of value come from it – other than a few sleepless nights thinking about a few meaningless movies…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.