Imagination and the Wilderness of the Mind

So, the above may rub some of you readers the wrong way if you perhaps don't enjoy Jim Carrey, James Cameron or Matt Damon...But bear with me, these are from of my favourite films, and will help, I hope, to help you see a little bit into me and the madness of my little weird and wonderful world of imagination...And more importantly, shall hope to illustrate the importance of mind, memory and imagination, three of the most potent elements associated with all three films.

When I was eight years old, in a little international school in Kampala, Uganda, at the end of the school year, I was awarded a certificate for "The most vivid imagination". From that point on, I felt astonishingly proud of my imagination, I had been awarded seemingly for my ability to imagine another world, to imagine weird and wonderful creatures, to be the best in my class at escapism! What a fantastic time of life that is, where you are encouraged to escape life, which even at that time put little strain on me, deciding as to whether I make a den out of chairs or boxes. (I usually used big boxes). Things change a little as we get older though it would seem; imagining another place, another world, another life, can be stamped "childish" and plastered with comments like "someone needs to wake up to reality". There is such a pessimistic attitude that runs through society, concerning how tough reality is, how hard and trying life can be, well my job for now is to show how this is so definitely not the case whatsoever!

C.S. Lewis said that "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." (Till We have Faces). Now here was a man who understood the cross over between reality and the imagination. The very placing of imagination in our minds is a God given gift, and a choice to let go of the burdens that life can sometimes put on our shoulders. There are two purposes I believe for the imagination which we are given, firstly to escape. I cannot deny that imagination can be a haven of peace for the busiest among us, or a world of adventure for the bored and restless among us. But secondly, and more importantly, it is so evident that we have been given this imagination to preeminently see the way God's world could and should be. But in looking at both, we will see how both are gifts in themselves.

A world of Adventure and a sea of Tranquility
Avatar was a controversial film, two groups of people generally on one side of the spectrum or the other, love. or hate. But 3 oscars to its name, 25 other awards and 56 nominations had to have accounted for something. Perhaps the more cynical among us will attribute it to the fantastic CGI effects, others to the fact that it was a film of James Cameron, but for me, I attribute it to the way in which the world of Pandora (in James Cameron's head) was spilled out onto the screen, creating a world in which every human being would want to exist if they could. The colours, vibrancy and the abilities of the avatars to connect with their world composes this total haven.

Bond, James Bond. Love them. All of them. Definitely a film for the restless in this world, every man wants the suave, the walk, the sharp fighting ability, and the charm to capture beautiful women of Bond; every woman wants the beauty, the sense of danger and being rescued of a Bond girl. Okay, maybe not every girl, but I have certainly found myself feeling alive and pumped with the adrenaline that courses through my veins when watching a Bond film.

And last but definitely not least, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A film about memory removal for fear to face reality. I love this film, possibly my favourite film of all time, as it follows the relationship between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as it falls apart and Carrey goes to have her removed from his memory. Undoubtedly many of us have experienced a time or experience in our lives that we would like to erase from our memories, but this would definitely escape the reality that we cannot.

This wonderful sense of escapism is beautiful, anyone who dreams or daydreams can appreciate how when it reaches half past 2 on a monday afternoon in the middle of a maths lesson, there is nothing better than a bit if imagination to run away! But it can be a false sense of peace, a place to run to when things become scary or intense. This is when the imagination can be a dangerous place. The imagination is a place created by conscious thought being put towards an idea; the problem with this is that if we stay far from God in our thoughts, this imagination can be manipulated, and soon that escapist walls can be formed around our thoughts locking God out, and not letting ourselves breathe. Our thoughts, good and bad, and every aspect of our imaginative capacity needs to be given over to God.

Seeing God's world through our Imagination
I think often the reason that we feel a tendency towards wanting to escape at all, is to do with the hopelessness of reality. I must thank Tom Hardwick for his fantastic blog on the monsters in life (take a look at http://tom-hardwick.blogspot.com/)and for drawing it to my attention, as in reading his blog titled "If you're not scared, you're not paying attention", he addresses those monsters and how scary they can seem without God in the picture. Imagination is the bomb shelter from this life, but there is something so much more beautiful that it was intended for- seeing God's creation and the design for His world. We need to allow ourselves, and in fact push ourselves to examine how perfect this world could be, if everyone would come into relationship with Jesus. Imagination can invoke us to act on what we see in our heads, and how fantastic would it be if everyone in relationship with Jesus would be so excited to introduce their friends to Him, that transforming His world would become a reality more vivid, more vibrant and vastly superior to anything in the mind of James Cameron (no offence).
I desperately want to pray that God infiltrates my imagination with His spirit, overtaking every one of my thoughts and transforming them into seeing His kingdom on earth. I hope that the very imagination that I was awarded for would be a resting place for the Holy spirit, reminding me again and again of the vibrancy of His world, His earth, His kingdom.