The imagination works through suggestion, not description.
Description is always direct and frequently closes off what it names.
Suggestion respects the mystery and richness of a thing.
All it offers are clues to its nature.
Suggestion keeps the mystery open and extends us the courtesy
of inviting us to see the thing for ourselves.
It offers us the hospitality and freedom
to trust the integrity of our own encounter with a thing.
This is how a work of art can allow itself to be seen
in so many different and often conflicting ways.
It does not foreclose on the adventure of revelation.
~~John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (HarperCollins: 2004)
