By James Schwarzlose
Blaisé Pascal, mystic and pioneer mathematician, made clear that intuition and imagination are the key to life forces that rational thinking can never attain. “The heart has its reasons,” he wrote, “which reason cannot comprehend. It is the heart which knows God, not the reason.” As Pascal realized, unless we tap the depths of our intuition and imagination, we may lose sight of the source of all life and knowledge. What star, like that which the Magi followed, would go unobserved? What miracles would go unnoticed? What possibilities of God would be dismissed?
When we venture beyond our senses and enter into the realm of imagination, we open up new dimensions of the universe far beyond the calculations of human reason. Imagination is the stuff of “uncommon sense.” Jesus told us that with God nothing is impossible (Mark 10:27). Imagine that! There are no limits to how we may expand, transcend, and be free when we allow the Holy Spirit to speak – and when we listen in faith.
When the angel told Mary that she would give birth to the Messiah, the one from God who would set her people free, Mary momentarily allowed “common sense” to rule. “How can this be?” she asked incredulously. But once her heart comprehended God in all God’s grandeur, she saw beyond reason’s limited boundaries to the possibilities of God and broke into song. Holy imagination allowed those possibilities to work within and through her.
We too can allow those miraculous possibilities of God to work in our lives. When we let go of the rational limits of our minds, our imaginations take us to new levels of community and freedom. When we banish doubt in favor of imagination, we open our lives to miracles of healing of bodies and souls and peacemaking among ancient enemies. When we join together in supportive, loving community, we can share the dreams and yearnings of our hearts. Then we will fully engage all our senses – heart, mind, and soul – and allow God to speak to us through scripture, through the witness of others, and through “still small voices.” Then will our hearts more truly comprehend God.
James Schwarzlose has been an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. He currently teaches in Atlanta with his wife, Myrna, where they seek peace by living simply so that others might simply live.
Do you have sources for your Pascal quotations that you are willing to share?
Galen,
The one quotation I use, “The heart has it’s reasons…” comes from Pensées which is a posthumously published set of notes (the title translates as “Thoughts”).
The work also includes the concept called Pascal’s Wager which suggest that even though the existence of God cannot be “proved” by reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.
Some have suggested that this was another one of Pascal’s ground breaking contributions in that it opens the door to “probability theory.” In his day, metaphysics, mysticism and mathematics were not arbitrarily divided.