I’m Josh, a high school English and Biblical Studies teacher, a husband and father, and a lifelong reader of stories.
I created The Wise Imagination because I believe stories do more than entertain us or decorate ideas we already understand. They shape what we notice. They give form to our desires. They allow us to encounter goodness, evil, courage, sacrifice, beauty, and grace before we are asked to define them. At their best, stories train us to see the world more truthfully and to live in it more wisely.
Why “The Wise Imagination”?
The name of this site comes from George MacDonald, the Scottish novelist, poet, and Christian thinker whose writing has deeply influenced my own. MacDonald understood imagination not as an escape from reality, but as a way of awakening us to its mystery. A wise imagination does not invent a private world in which anything can be true. It helps us look beyond the surface of things and become more attentive to the moral and spiritual shape of reality.
That idea sits at the centre of this site. I am interested in the way fantasy, fairy tales, myth, and poetry can reach truths that abstract explanation alone cannot. An argument can tell us what courage is. A story can place us beside a frightened person who must decide whether to act courageously. It lets us rehearse judgment from the inside.