Week of Gratitude ~ My Imagination and the Multi-Colored Horse

This week at People for Others, Paul Campbell, SJ, is hosting a Week of Gratitude. Since gratitude is my word for the year, I find this especially helpful on my journey.  The theme for this week is Gratitude for the Little Things in Life. Spiritual writers like Ginny Kubitz Moyer, Matt Weber, Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, Julianne Stanz, and Joe Paprocki are adding their ‘little things’ to the conversation. After you read about my ‘little things’ hope on over to People for Others and enjoy their thoughts.

The posts begin with Ginny Moyer who is grateful for her imagination…as am I. My imagination has fed my soul for as long as I can remember. It has kept me entertained, and mostly sane, for all these years. I hope it has entertained a few of you along the way. 🙂 For this I am grateful.

My first memory of my imagination was drawing a portrait of my Mother when I was four. It won such rave reviews that I knew I wanted to earn that kind of praise throughout my life. When I was six, I published my first newspaper. The first page headline was misspelled, but I carried on regardless. I was on a roll with this imagination.

I gave impromptu performances on a regular basis. I loved (and still do) applause. I danced with wild abandon when ever I heard music (in real life or in my head). It didn’t matter, I danced and still do. I recited The Song of Hiawatha at the dinner table when I was five-ish. My aunt Faye had read it to me and I remembered it…word for word.

A Storyteller from Age Five

The best part of my imagination was documented by my kindergarden teacher, Mary Kaye McCabe. She recorded a story I told my classmates about a multi-colored pet horse my grandparents had. She gave me high praise for a grand imagination…except we didn’t have a horse who wore pink petticoats and ate apples and sugar in my bedroom. 🙂 The more of the story I told, the more my classmates were entranced. That horse, at that exact moment, was real to them and to me.

Trust me that horse was exactly like that in my imagination!

My Imagination

I once asked an highly-imaginative author what the difference was between an author and a storyteller. His response still rings in my ears. “The difference between an author and a storyteller is an author only has one ending.” Ahhhhh, I so get why I am a storyteller. I can perpetually create new endings…