Forget our minds for a moment. Have we lost our imaginations? When speculative fiction had fewer special effects to rely upon, the results were in the ideas expressed. The fiction was better because it was the selling point of the end product. This is no longer the case.

This line of reasoning was birthed by a theology class on the Holy Spirit. My question was, ” is the Holy Spirit so often avoided in conversation because he is the most anti-modernist incarnation?” God creating the Universe is a very distant idea. We do not have to think of creation in terms of our present reality. By the same token, Christ was a long time ago in a place very far away.

Contrast this with the Holy Spirit who is at work in our everyday lives. Even when you accept miracles, it is easier to put them in a historical context than in a daily context in the present tense. Given a time frame so large that our minds cannot process it, running into and beyond the billions of years, we can accept the plausibility of the impossible. But, if the frame of reference is short enough for our minds to digest it, we would reject these extreme possibilities without prejudice.

My thinking follows from there through the thought that we may be afraid to depart from the prevailing orthodoxy enough to really dream. Have we become so attached to the idea of an absolute, physical reality that we dismiss any idea that challenges this belief? In shorter words, are we so attached to the idea that the whole of reality is nothing more than we believe it to be that we will not dream beyond its bounds? Maybe we have forgotten how to imagine.

We are miserable because, without the ability to imagine, we lack the focus required to move forward. Our world seems closed and our minds tell us that we are at the end of it. Your eyes are forbidden to see what you refuse to accept. Everything is pointless from here. Lacking the goal to drive us onward, we are utterly defeated by the first complication in our grand designs.

Any my real question is whether or not we have lost our imaginations. Have we stopped walking through mirrors into fantastic worlds now that we occupy a world that calls such pursuits foolish? Are we so ingrained with a model of reality so simple that we can swallow it whole that we cannot even pretend the things forbidden by this world view? Do we have to rehash old storylines because the ideas are safe enough to not be a threat to our newfound naturalism?

Do you find your mind rejecting ideas because they are impossible? The naturalist faith has been so deeply impressed into us that it even restrains our dreams. Have we lost the ability to look into the world and see the things that never were? Without that gift, I wonder, can we build a future for the children that we will leave behind at the end of our days?

Our art has become lifeless and shallow. Modern art is formless and lacks point. It actually seems that there is nothing new under the sun and I know that this is not the case. So, how can our imagination be revived?

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