Has anyone ever told you that you have a great imagination? Or that you’re really good at make-believe? Or, on the other hand, has anyone ever told you to get your head out of the clouds? Or focus on real life here on Earth instead of playing pretend? Imagination is a gift from God. Sometimes grown ups forget that and get so distracted by the endless things they have to do that they forget that sometimes imaginary things are the most real of all.
Our storymaker of the past, Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, on November 29, 1898. His father was a lawyer and his mother was the daughter and great-granddaughter of priests. Lewis had an older brother Warren, who was his best friend. As a child, Lewis loved stories, especially about animals. He especially loved the books of Beatrix Potter, whose animal characters behaved as humans, ironing, cooking, talking and laughing. He and his brother invented an entire imaginary world, Boxen, a fantasy land run by animals.
In 1908, Lewis’s mother passed away and he was sent off to school. Even though he was not able to play his imaginary games, he became fascinated with mythology- Norse, Greek and Irish. He found the stories of these traditions to contain beauty and truth, even though some considered them “only stories.”
He served in World War I, was injured and sent home for convalescence. Then, he went to University at Oxford, where he met his lifelong friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series. The two friends bonded over their strong imaginations, their invented worlds and their heroic characters. They went on to form a literary group, The Inklings, who met in a pub in Oxford and shared their writings of all kinds.
Lewis wrote two fiction series- the Space Trilogy for adults and the Chronicles of Narnia for adults and children alike. Beloved worldwide, the Chronicles of Narnia tell the story of four human children who venture into another world where animals behave like humans. Despite years of schooling, war and anger against God, Lewis’s imagination never left him, and created a world that explains great truths about life, faith, love and grace in a way we can all understand.
Lewis was a Christian apologist and wrote numerous books explaining and advocating for Christian theology. Even in his non-fiction, Lewis cannot help himself. He believed that all things, in their way, real and imaginary, reflect hidden truth. He was a master at taking an abstract idea and placing it and his readers in a shared experience, like when he wrote in Mere Christianity that ““Theology is like a map…Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map.” Now, we can understand the idea because we can imagine ourselves on a voyage, navigating by a map.
Here at StoryMakers, we agree. We believe imagination is one of every child’s most valuable resources and is an ideal access point for the story of God’s great love. The stories of the Bible are peppered with action, drama, rebellion, and redemption. Through creative engagement, children can experience these stories with curiosity, questions, empathy, and surprising insight as they recognize themselves in the stories and see their own need for God.
One of my favorite Advent traditions has been to read The Chronicles of Narnia throughout the season. In the midst of a busy time of year, retreating to Narnia, to the stories of the children, the animals, and the Lion remind me of the truth that is at the center of our story. Imagination is a gift, and allows us to learn, engage and discover more truth than any fact-finding could ever teach us. C.S. Lewis himself once wrote, “The imagination is the organ of meaning.” Sometimes the imaginary is our best way to hear God’s story.
