"God exists for those who imagine God
God doesn't exist for those who imagine something else"
Ruby Neumann
Lent is coming to an end soon. This is the last week. I am glad to be done with the conversations around the existence or non-existence of "God". I am content to return to being a loving partner to my husband, playing with my cats, visiting my mother once in a while and take her on an occasional road trip. Life goes on. Our imaginations will be our companion on this journey.
My parents, my sister and I went to Disney World/Epcot Center in 1985. I fell in love with Figment on my first day there. Figment was the mascot of one of the Epcot attractions called "Journey to Imagination". He was a lovable looking purple dragon. It took three days of walking by gift shops before I could take home a stuffed version of Figment. I still have that stuffie somewhere in my collection. He became my favourite stuffie of all time. I never got a t-shirt. I was allowed one memorabilia from Disney World, and I chose Figment.
I had a wild love for the idea of Imagination. I could be, go, or do anything I wanted to in the realm of imagination. That love gave birth to my creativity. My world became more livable, joyful and meaningful... all because of a little thing called imagination. That little dragon Figment was the picture of that for me.
Imagination plays a very different role for me now. It helps me understand religion and spirituality a lot more. It helps me understand humanity a lot more. We as humans need imagination in our lives. We need to stretch ourselves beyond ourselves. Imagination does that. It largely explains religion. We use that creativity within us to give us something beyond that we can't experience with our own senses.
But most adherents to religion will not claim imagination as the ground for their religious practices and beliefs. For them, imagination has moved into the realm of reality. I think that is where the power of imagination lies. Somehow, we can embrace our hopes, wishes, longings so hard that they start to become real. This might just be what the Journey to Imagination is all about. This is what being human is all about. We are given limitations in our existence and it seems it's up to us to go farther than those limitations.
What drew me to that purple dragon was his uniqueness. It seemed that most people went to the Disney parks for Mickey Mouse. I wasn't into the normal even back then. I wanted something or someone that wasn't the norm. That dragon invited me on a journey and that was exciting for me.
Today... I am still on the journey. Every day can take me on turns and around bends that still give me something to hope for and dream about. That is what I find beautiful, and that is what I found when I found Figment.
