My husband of thirty-six years—a Grammy Award-winning songwriter—is teaching me once again to celebrate imagination.
He has made a career out of creating something out of nothing and trusting that it's something the world wants to hear. It’s heartbreaking at times, and it’s also the most inspiring example of how to live fully.
I love thinking about how everyone is free to use our imaginations, the same imagination used by prophets and poets since they first looked up at a cloud or saw possibility in a flower. I believe we are a faith of imagination. We are raised by believing love can change everything, especially if we can be creative.
I asked a group of women I was hiking with what imagination means to them. One said she thinks of her grandchildren and the worlds they create. Another thought of Vincent van Gogh and how he saw color. Another simply said, “I think of quiet and remembering my heart.” That’s when I said, “I think of my husband.”
Marcus, my husband, has recently dreamed up a new album called "Songs for Emily." He set her poetry to music and invited friends like Sara Evans, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Darrell Scott to join him. Each song is his take on her wild, imaginative world—one that celebrates moors, gardens, and love.
Our son is producing the project and wrote us yesterday to let us know it was submitted to the Grammys for consideration. The chances of this wildly marginal record making it through the processes are as slim as a snowball in a temperate climate. But that isn’t even close to the point. The point is that he dreamed it, it has life, and it has opportunities. That is the gift of imagination: it gives us life and space to explore new possibilities.
I hope for each of you, on these hot August days (unless you’re like Pearl Ncube in Botswana, in the midst of winter), that you give yourself the space to imagine something beautiful—and see where it takes you.
I love imagining.
-- Becca Stevens
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