Spirit & Life, July-August 2009

Sandra Levy creates a masterful work dealing with imagination, from earliest childhood's foundations to adult use of imagination on one's faith journey. For her the imagination's foundation is laid in childhood, even in the beginnings of learning spatial relations in the creeping crawling stage. Up is good -- Dad picks you "up" and smiles, the cookie jar is "up." Perhaps that is why God and heaven are "up." Chapters four and five are important to study for anyone touching children's lives.

She examines the importance of ritual in our personal and communal experiences and strongly challenges our sometimes-rigid definition of ritual. She describes group and private rituals and probes them for meaning. Often our private unique rituals/experiences can be rich in meaning though we depreciate them. We are asked here to embrace them.

Music, art, dance, poetry, etc. are all studied for their imaginative use along our journey of faith. This rather slim volume is well worth not only reading, but may be used as a measure of our own acceptance and valuing of our imagination as we develop a transcendent and fuller faith life.

- Shirleymae Flake Pajkos