Did you have an imaginary friend when you were little? Maybe you were an only child, so you invented a sibling or two. Or perhaps your imaginary friend was the safe, quiet pal you ran to when your brood of brothers and sisters grew too loud. She may have been the image you conjured when you needed a fellow adventurer and everyone in the real world seemed too afraid, or when you needed someone who understood you when no else could.

Though we leave such figments behind as we grow older, we don’t have to abandon the wonder of fictionalized companions altogether. In “Books Open Windows into Holiness,” Jessica Hooten Wilson explains that she has literary characters she considers when she imagines what it looks like to be holy.

“I have a cloud of witnesses—from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Father Zosima to Walker Percy’s Father Smith to Willa Cather’s Archbishop Latour to Toni Morrison’s Baby Suggs,” Wilson says. “You’ll notice in the novels that I have chosen to explore that these characters are not perfect; they are not goody-goodies, and their stories are not hagiographies. Rather, these figures exhibit the reality of our common sinfulness as they chase after holiness with greater and lesser diligence.”

Our days of saving a spot at the table for our invented sister or escaping to the treehouse with our crew of fellow explorers are long gone. But, through literature, we are still able to imagine, learn, and find companionship in the characters we long to know and become.