Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being... ultimate reality is what we call God.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that creativity and imagination are essential for understanding profound truths about existence and divinity.
R. S. Thomas posits that imaginative truth provides a direct connection to the ultimate reality, which he equates with God. This highlights the significance of creative thought in grasping complex spiritual concepts, indicating that our understanding of the divine is often shaped by imaginative processes rather than strictly rational or empirical ones.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of art in understanding spirituality.
The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.
A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes.
Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.
Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.
A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships
Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.
You might say, 'Can't we have a more human Christianity, without the cross, without Jesus, without stripping ourselves?' In this way we'd become pastry-shop Christians, like a pretty cake and nice sweet things. Pretty, but not true Christians.
Man is a creative animal, doomed to strive toward a goal, engaged in full-time engineering.
We have built a thousand temples to Fortune and not one to Reason
But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, _x000D_ And by their vices brought to servitude, _x000D_ Than to love bondage more than liberty,_x000D_ Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
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