a spoon full of sugar

I was watching Mary Poppins the other day with my girls and a couple of gentlemen (who shall remain nameless--you know who you are). Neither of them had seen this classic of movie-making magic before and one of them was quite critical about this one of my all-time favourite films. He thought it was "slow," "pointless," "ridiculous," silly, and he did not like the character of Mary Poppins (perhaps it's because she is practically perfect in every way). I suppose if you dwell in a world where the readily visible creation is all you think constitutes reality, a world where you cannot stand to have your presuppositions and conceptions stirred up a bit (let alone stood upon their heads), then you might not appreciate a handbag which contains a coat rack, an afternoon spent riding carousel horses (in a fox chase and a horse race) in a painting, or tea on the ceiling. I suppose, like Mr. Banks, you, my good sir, have the can't-see-past-the-end-of-your-nose bug; you have forgotten how to suspend disbelief, how to play, how to be a CHILD. If this is the case, I pity you--and hope you don't contaminate anyone with your life-dulling virus of blind rationality. (P.S. I believe ALL of creation was tainted by the fall--reason/rationality included and therefore was fantasy/imagination redeemed!--I also think that, in some cases, what we call "fantasy" comes closer to the Truth than strict mimesis, but that's a blog entry for another day.)

So, here is some much needed medicine for your ailment (don't worry, it's sweet)...

"In the creative act we experience the same freedom we know in dreams. This happens as I write a story. I am bound by neither time nor space. I know these distant galaxies to which Meg Murry went with Charles Wallace and Calvin. I live in seventeenth century Portugal with Mariana Alcoforado. But this freedom comes only when, as in a dream, I do not feel that I have to dictate and control what happens. I dream, sometimes, that I am in a beautiful white city I have never seen in "real" life, but I believe in it. I also believe in the planet, Uriel, with its beautiful flying creatures, and also in that other planet where are found the unicorn hatching-grounds.

When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colours are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.

Small children, knowing this freedom, do things which, to adults living in the grown-up world, are impossible. They see things which grown-up eyes cannot see. They hear things which fall on deaf ears with their parents. And they believe the things they do and see and hear. And when, eager and unprepared, they describe these marvellous things, they are told, by kindly and reasonable and well-meaning parents, that they have vivid imaginations. Less understanding adults tell the children that whatever it is they think they have done, or see, or heard, is impossible. Some children are told to stop telling lies. Some are even punished.

We grow up and forget. Peter didn't remember that he had forgotten how to walk on water, and so he walked--until he remembered--and then he got frightened and sank, and Jesus took him by the hand and pulled him out of the water and told him that he lacked faith.

Children are taught fear early, fear of water, fear of fire. Not that parents aren't right to warn; too many little ones have drowned, have been burned, because of careless parents. But there's a fine line between essential prudence for the child's sake, and the destruction of creativity. Allowing the child a certain amount of solitude in a reasonably safe environment (no environment in this world is totally safe) is allowing the child's imagination to grow and develop, so that the child may ultimately learn how to be mature. Traherne says, "We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future."

I was lucky as a child in being given a lot of solitude. Some of this was happenstance because of my father's illness and my lack of siblings. But it did provide me with an atmosphere in which imagination could fluorish. And nobody told me it was childish to believe in angels. And so I was able to do a few impossible things.

For instance: when I was a small child, visiting my grandmother at her beach cottage, I used to go down the winding stairs without touching them. This was a special joy to me. I think I went up the regular way, but I came down without touching. Perhaps it was because I was so used to thinking things over in solitude that it never occured to me to tell anybody about this marvellous thing, and because I never told , nobody told me it was impossible.

When I was twelve we went to Europe to live, hoping the air of the Alps might help my father's lungs. I was fourteen when we returned, and went to stay with my grandmother at the beach. The first thing I did when I found myself alone was to go to the top of the stairs. And I could no longer go down them without touching. I had forgotten how.

Did I, in fact, ever go down those winding stairs without touching them? I am convinced that I did. And during the years enough people have timidly told me of "impossible" things they have done, that I am convinced that the impossible is open to far more people than we realize--mostly because we are fearful of being ridiculed if we talk about it. Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of the imagination. It binds us where we should be free."

~from Maleleine L'Engle's Walking on Water