But I would say that imagination is a key to discernment, and so to prayer, even to faith. Noble laureate physicist Richard Feynman wrote something that clarifies the point: "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things that are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which really are there." That is precisely what I think discernment and faith are about: imagining and trying to comprehend, to interpret things that really are there but which somehow we have been intimidated into avoiding or denying for fear of being labeled naive or unsophisticated. It seems the quantum physicists and cosmologists are rediscovering the mystery and wonder, or, if you will, the shocking and amazing things going on in our universe and in our world, while too often we "religious types" are off picking blackberries and flat-lining our lives. Among other things, perhaps foremost among other things, prayer is about imagining things that really are there in our experiences and helping us imagine them, trust them, engage them as the gracious mysteries they are.
— Ted Loder, My Heart in My Mouth