This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
This might sound odd, but I am thinking a lot at the moment about dreaming and the role of the imagination. Maybe it’s just the holiday in my head as I get a break. And I do recall the words of Paul Valery who remarked that “the best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up”.
Well, ‘Dreaming’ is the theme for the final third of Leeds23 – a year of city of culture celebrations. And the next few months will see people of all ages and stages engaging in imaginative arts events that encourage us to go beyond the prejudices and expectations that can too easily limit us … as we imagine a better future for individuals and communities in Leeds. Dream some dreams!
Now, contrary to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous song, not “any dream will do”. Some dreams are appalling and should be binned quickly. But, the arts have a knack of subverting our assumptions and inviting us to look and imagine a world differently. They engage the senses in ways that simple propositions do not.
This is one reason why, after a lifetime of reading it, I am gripped by the Bible. It is full of stories and images that, like all the arts, can confront me with – sometimes uncomfortable – truth, but ask me to use my imagination, going beyond what is immediately graspable. The Hebrew prophets subvert complacency on the part of the wealthy by using images of destruction: “forget your vocation to honor justice and serve poor people and you will lose everything … like a vineyard that has grown wild and useless, for example.
Jesus used image and story to challenge the sort of theological thinking that locked God and the world into controllable systems of thought or social order. For example, he once described “where God is,” as being “like … a mustard seed” which grows into a tree in which the birds of the air make their nests. Uncomfortably for a church that wishes to gate-keep its membership, Jesus suggests that the tree doesn’t get to choose which birds nest in its branches! In other words, we can’t control God or where God chooses to be, but should be open to newness.
There is nothing romantic about this. But, this is how art, poetry, music, drama (and so on) can open up our imagination rather than imprison us in the ‘now’.
I think the next few months of Leeds23 will be brilliant. But, the invitation to a renewed imagination – the dreaming of dreams – goes beyond a year of celebration. As Jesus illustrated, human beings need to be drawn by a vision, not driven by a closed mind.
