Hi folks, I hope you are doing ok, this week we are meeting at the Brewery in Whitley Bay, it would be lovely to see you if you are able, meeting at 7.30pm.
This week I have struggled to think about what to write… I didn’t fancy one of the Big Questions blogs this week, although like last week you think it is a big question… So here we go… I want to think about imagination… Now hold on to your hats… many of you know I’m not a big reader, well this year I decided, kind of by accident, that I would try to read a bit more, well, to be honest with you I have said that many times over the years. But this year it’s actually working, as I write I have completed three books and I have started two more! I am being adventurous in my choice as well, a poetry and short stories book, a biography, a crime novel, and I’m currently reading another novel and a book about trees!
I have to say I am enjoying it because I’m getting to use my imagination – picturing the scenes and the characters… Sometimes I’m so deeply imagining the scene that I find myself in the story! As I was thinking about this I thought about Jesus and the many parables he told… Jesus told these stories to offer the hearers a way to try to understand and picture themselves in these stories… no answers, just wonderings and imaginings to help them in their journey. George MacDonald explains when describing the value of good stories, they serve not “so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning.” I think that is what Jesus was trying to do in his storytelling, to wake meaning within us.
Reflecting on this a little more, MacDonald describes imagination as an:
“imaging or a making of likenesses. The imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape.” He also calls it ‘revelations of thought’.
If the imagination is about waking meaning within us, then it could lead us to all kinds of places.
In thinking about this i also came across an article from the Saturday Evening post form October 1929 where Albert Einstein was interviewed and reflects on his discovery relativity, he states:
‘I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, funded by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would totally tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong. […] I am enough of an artist to draw freely from the imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
So pondering on this a bit more I’m wondering if the imagination is somehow connected to the divine within us, around us, the in and the of, of everything? Maybe the Holy Spirit? What if we used our imaginations to connect with faith and spirituality and the divine? Where could this lead and what could this free us from?
I also wonder if imagination could lead us to be more creative in the way that we live our lives and go about our everyday existence, our imagination gives us the freedom to go anywhere, be anyone, to invent an entirely different construct about where we can live. Now of course there are limitations to the last part of that, but what if we began to imagine it and try to enable an alternative situation for us. Our current climate emergency would suggest a radical shift in our living and being, maybe our imaginations can enable that to become a reality.
Some questions
Best book you have read over the last 12 months?
How is your imagination, how do you use it?
What do you think Jesus was doing speaking parables/stories?
What do you think about the ‘imagination waking meaning’?
Imagination or knowledge?
The divine/Holy Spirit does it/could it be connected to imagination?
How could we use imagination to help us live differently?
Peace Rob
Image by 0fjd125gk87 from Pixabay
Rob Wylie is the founder of BeachcomberFX and guides its leadership team. He has worked in the North East for over 20 years and has vast experience from various roles he has held. He has a passion for Fresh Expressions of Church and Pioneer Ministry as well as beer, beaches and Miniature Schnauzers.