The eternal destiny of the creative mind

[roseproject]

One of the greatest joys in my life is creating, particularly stories and characters.

This joy, I believe, originates from the pleasure God felt in creating each of us; the love and care he put into each of us. Is this sentiment towards the creations of my soul destined to be done away with when we get to Heaven, or to be perfected in the light of how God used them for the good of myself and others? Of course, this knowledge would be a secondary source of joy through the center of our joy which is God.

My mentality is that all things that are inherently good and of God are destined to become perfected and transfigured in Heaven. Yet, at the same time, earthly “goods” are inevitably going to be “subject to decay”. Where does something like an imaginary character created from the faculties of the soul fall into the equation: The fate of earthly good? Or in some mysterious and profound way, are they destined to become perfected in the soul from which it came? Yes, a drawing of a character is destined to dissolve with the former earth, but what about the concept itself; something someone dug so deep to create?

What’s the purpose of creating something with all your heart and with the deepest depths of your own imagination? Why do imaginary realities, such as fantasy stories, affect us so much? Is it right to feel joy and emotion over things that are, in the most basic sense, not real? One cannot read a beautifully written story and see it as nothing more than a scrambling of words or look at a picture of a genuinely created character and see it as nothing more than a series of lines and colors, right? That would make fantasy useless! From where does this feeling come and where do you think it’s going if this experience is indeed an inherently good one?

I hope I’m making sense to whoever reads this haha

Thanks in advance

 

[GEddie]

Anything that has a purely physical existence will be destroyed; there will be no Harry Potter memorabilia in the next life.

However, the powers of our mind/soul will survive, and be expanded in the head of our resurrectional body.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

One of the greatest joys in my life is creating, particularly stories and characters.

This joy, I believe, originates from the pleasure God felt in creating each of us; the love and care he put into each of us. Is this sentiment towards the creations of my soul destined to be done away with when we get to Heaven, or to be perfected in the light of how God used them for the good of myself and others? Of course, this knowledge would be a secondary source of joy through the center of our joy which is God.

My mentality is that all things that are inherently good and of God are destined to become perfected and transfigured in Heaven. Yet, at the same time, earthly “goods” are inevitably going to be “subject to decay”. Where does something like an imaginary character created from the faculties of the soul fall into the equation: The fate of earthly good? Or in some mysterious and profound way, are they destined to become perfected in the soul from which it came? Yes, a drawing of a character is destined to dissolve with the former earth, but what about the concept itself; something someone dug so deep to create?

What’s the purpose of creating something with all your heart and with the deepest depths of your own imagination? Why do imaginary realities, such as fantasy stories, affect us so much? Is it right to feel joy and emotion over things that are, in the most basic sense, not real? One cannot read a beautifully written story and see it as nothing more than a scrambling of words or look at a picture of a genuinely created character and see it as nothing more than a series of lines and colors, right? That would make fantasy useless! From where does this feeling come and where do you think it’s going if this experience is indeed an inherently good one?

I hope I’m making sense to whoever reads this haha

Thanks in advance

I don’t know what will happen in heaven; but I do hope to see you there creating beautiful compositions with your thoughts, and others joyfully shaping matter, and others making music, or dancing…, dancing…, dancing…

 

[GEddie]

I don’t know what will happen in heaven; but I do hope to see you there creating beautiful compositions with your thoughts, and others joyfully shaping matter, and others making music, or dancing…, dancing…, dancing…

Or even more than one at a time… Streaming light or sound from our limbs…etc.

ICXC NIKA!

 

[DanielJT]

No, no, no. Fantasy useless?

NEVER!

Have you read Tolkien’s "On
brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf

Here is a quote from it: “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”

He also quotes Chesterton speaking about fantasy stories and how they have been relegated to children - “For children are innocent and prefer justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” Chesterton was speaking to the idea that in fantasy stories the evil tends to get their due and the good is able to prevail.

Tolkien writes in the above mentioned essay that fairy stories are, in a way, more real than the reality we live in because in our world we have muddled up beauty and truth and purity with ugliness and lies and filth so much that we become sort of displaced amongst it all. In fairy stories, the ugly mean ogre has an ugly old castle guarded by a wretched dragon.

And in the end, just as our end has been promised by He Who wrote our story, they live happily ever after.

 

[roseproject]

No, no, no. Fantasy useless?

NEVER!

Have you read Tolkien’s "On
brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf

Here is a quote from it: “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”

He also quotes Chesterton speaking about fantasy stories and how they have been relegated to children - “For children are innocent and prefer justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” Chesterton was speaking to the idea that in fantasy stories the evil tends to get their due and the good is able to prevail.

Tolkien writes in the above mentioned essay that fairy stories are, in a way, more real than the reality we live in because in our world we have muddled up beauty and truth and purity with ugliness and lies and filth so much that we become sort of displaced amongst it all. In fairy stories, the ugly mean ogre has an ugly old castle guarded by a wretched dragon.

And in the end, just as our end has been promised by He Who wrote our story, they live happily ever after.

I whole-heartedly agree with all of this! This reminds me of this written quote from C.S. Lewis…quotenik.com/c-s-lewis-dedication-lion-witch-and-the-wardrobe/

Thanks for the link. I’ll surely read it at a later time

 

[roseproject]

Another thing that bugs me is what place might fantasy/storytelling have in a place like Heaven…where, instead of getting glimpses of truth, beauty, etc. the very essence of truth is in front of you? Would there be any room for surprises or tales with twists and turns strewn throughout? Perhaps, since we’ll all experience Heaven in “different levels”, there will, in fact, be room to tell each other things; teach each other things we perceive?

What about characters? Would there be a need to create characters for said stories or/and use as a means of expressing ourselves? Would creating characters become (as far as I’ve regrettably been seeing it now) redundant and unnecessary? There will be plenty of “real people” in Heaven anyways (of course, people shouldn’t create characters as a total replacement for real people, which certainly isn’t my case at least).

…So yeah, I feel as if my creativeness is going through a sort of identity crisis at the moment Part of the reason could be that I kind of went through a rather “rude awakening” of sorts as far as where my priorities were ordered. I was previously questioning whether or not we’d remember anything of our lives after we’ve passed on to the next life. Many people including a priest I contacted came to the conclusion that, in one way or another, we will. Now, during that time, I realized something unsettling: the thought of me forgetting my friends and my characters in my stories made the thought of Heaven less desirable… Well then, I realized it was time that I got my priorities straight.

I decided that I would really make an effort to push my relationship with God front and center (it sure made for a productive lent, that’s for sure ).

After much thought and discernment, I really do think God is calling me to use my imagination to better the world. Sometimes, I thought I was trying to make myself think I wanted it when I really didn’t, but there is still that deep rooted desire to create something in the scale I (God, I’m convinced) that I had in mind; something that isn’t short from amazing.

I’m still confused with what place imagination and expression has in eternity.

God created completely out of nothing. He didn’t get any inspiration from anything but what was within Himself. No matter how original an artist or storyteller thinks their work is, it’s derivative in some way, shape, or form! What place would such humble works of ours have in eternity, I wonder?

Then…I can get really specific about it -__- Consider a great storyteller who puts their heart and soul into a piece they wrote and put real genuineness into their characters. Would such a character have the same fate as, say, a character or mascot that was created for a business or whatnot (will Bilbo Baggins have the same fate as…Sir Captain Crunch?? xD). I suppose you can go on to say that the former was a form of human expression and the other was closer to a creative “survival technique” to attract people to a business, but that’s my opinion for the most part.

…Then I can go deeper: do characters even have any objective worth in themselves or just the perceived worth of the person creating it or the person interpreting it? Obviously, the creation cannot be equal to the creator…it’s just… …What is the worth of it all? It makes me question the worth of me even caring about my own characters; that it should be completely done away with and replaced by something “real”. Like I said before, I certainly do not create characters or fictitious realities to fill some sort of hole for something that every human being should normally have besides it. I have a loving family, a small list of good friends, I live in a nice neighborhood, I can’t really complain.

It’s just…creating things with your imagination is…when you really stop to think about it, kind of strange. When I hear a beautiful song, see a beautiful landscape, experience something that just makes my heart sing, have the urge to create…something other than what I’m seeing, hearing, experiencing. If someone is seeing a beautiful meadow for an example, someone’s imagination might come up with, perhaps, a scene of fairy folk singing and making merry in that meadow which may, eventually, become something bigger like part of a story. Did we think of this because the meadow we saw wasn’t enough? It was certainly beautiful enough to trigger such a strong response in the viewer.

The whole subject has been scrambling my brain and making the act of creative imagination…not so enjoyable. I’ve been nearly avoiding it all together because of myself questioning it’s real worth in it’s eternal run…making me question how much real passion I should really put into the whole thing.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

In heaven itself, all our literal creations will count for nothing, as they’ll be destroyed at the Second Coming. This universe and all that is in it will vanish with a roar.

So much for London, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building and the patch of weeds in my backyard that I call a garden.

Ditto for all our artistic creations. They won’t be around either. If God wants a polyphonic, multidimensional music system for Himself, He won’t need us to create it.

But they may be used to steer other people towards heaven, and that will be important. Quite a number of Christians have been affected by the writings of CS Lewis for example.

And people need entertainment.

I go to a Catholic psychiatrist a couple of times a year, a hang-over from treatment for depression some time back. He’s always at me to “write”.

He made the comment that “You’re an observer. Other people are busy doing things, but you tend to observe. … It’s a sterile gift in itself, but if you put your observations in writing, it can be used to get other people to reflect on things.”

CS Lewis, with his academic lifestyle, tended to be an observer, in my opinion anyway. When he came to technical things, he’d have been the first to admit he was a klutz. But he was able to use his observational and intellectual abilities by putting them on paper and in turn getting other people to reflect on various issues as they related to Christ and Christianity.

Perhaps you’re an observer too, and maybe it’s part of your job to use this ability to get other people to reflect on things, even if the means you use is a fantasy.

In that way, maybe you’ll bear fruit.

As to how our creative abilities will be transcended in heaven, where God is all-in-all, I don’t know. I’d suggest you worry about that when you get there.

Actually it reminds me a bit of a humorous article by the late humourist Alan Coren called “Talkin’ Wid’ de Lord”, where he pondered on what we’re actually going to talk about.

"… I do not plan to move from the celestial spot until God and I have chewed the fat for an adequate spell.

But how to go about it?

Normal cocktail-party opening gambits are, of course, quite useless. ‘Have you ever noticed …?’ or "Has it ever struck you as peculiar that …?’ or ‘I bet you didn’t realise that …?’ are obviously out of the question. Indeed, omniscience itself could well prove to be an unclearable hurdle, since it would patently come as no surprise to the Almighty that Clement Freud once held the record of 105 omelettes in half an hour or that the male rabbit, if startled, will eat its own children. Facts are the one thing calculated to make the divine eye glaze and wander.

Likewise, jokes. Bizarre though it may be to ponder it, God has heard something like eighteen million jokes, including over two hundred about a man going into a chemist’s shop. Worse than that, and still more bizarre, is that - omnipotency being the thing it is - He also tells them better than anyone else.

We may well be on safer ground with opinions. Assuming the theologians have got it right in framing the concept of Free Will and weren’t just cobbling any old thing together to make some sort of sense out of life’s contradictory lunacies, I think we may take it that our opinions are our own and have not all been previously covered by God. He may, that is to say, be fascinated by our view that the new Lancia reminds us of the old Fiat, intrigued by our suggestion that it is better, when trying to get to Maidenhead from Barnes, to avoid the M4 altogether, and surprised to learn that we felt *Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy *to be incomprehensible cobblers (enabling us, perhaps, to get in some snappy riposte, such as ‘It’s all right for you, Almighty, you knew who the mole was all the time, har-har-har!’)…

So if you ever work out what’s going to happen to your fantasy stories post mortem, you might come back and tell me what exactly we’re going to talk to God about.

Just drop us a visionary line or two. My old pastor has.

 

[roseproject]

Well yeah, obviously the physical creations will be no more. Any memorabilia, drawings of an imagined character, physical books, etc.

What of the concept itself? I would like to think that we may be able to create better, more perfect versions of what we tried our best to create on earth (and other things, of course). No matter how good I get as an artist or how well I draw a character or whatnot, there will always be a way to do it better. The job of the artist is to do the very best that we can and push ourselves to make our works as wonderful as we can conceive them to be, and yet there is always a yearning to make our work better. I’d like to think that, in Heaven, we’ll create things in that perfect way we’ve always longed for! No more trial and error, but perfection every time!

Seeing as the act of creating things for the sake of self expression is something passed down to us by God; something very much like His act of creation, that there is some kind of eternity to it. A creation of the imagination, something created for it’s own sake and not for some specific use for survival, is also a movement of the creative parts of the soul. Wouldn’t something of the mental concept of said creations remain with us in some way to be glorified in some fashion in Heaven…seeing as the mind is part of the body and will be glorified with our souls?

 

[roseproject]

Also, what am I to make of this verse in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which says:

1050: “When we have spread on earth the fruits of our nature and our enterprise…according to the command of the Lord and in his Spirit, we will find them once again, cleansed this time from the stain of sin, illuminated and transfigured, when Christ presents to his Father an eternal and universal kingdom.”

 

[roseproject]

Ok, so after some time of serious thought, I think I may have figured out what was REALLY worrying me. Underneath all the questions and concerns, there was one source I realized they all stemmed from: I had become so enamored with characters (especially my own), that I started to forget the true, base meaning of the word “imaginary”; like I was starting to believe that all imaginary creations have some “deeper existence” besides within one’s mind. They had become more “real” to me than they needed to be!
Even though I had told myself many a time that “No, they do not have their own existence outside of my own imagination or other’s imagination.” Sub-Consciously, I think my mind was trying to convince myself otherwise…Like they had legitimately become their own creature of sorts…albeit without their own actions or liability to faults or…whatever…

This kind of makes sense though. There are times that, when I’m thinking about discarding a character from a story or what-not, that I start to legitimately feel bad for them, like I’m putting them down or something…even if I don’t particularly care for said character…It’s not like they feel anything on their own anyways.

Yes, it’s ok to feel emotionally attached to your characters to a point, but I think I was just sub-consciously taking it too far to the point that I was starting to make things more complicated and create strange notions about things like, for an example, what happens to our created characters after we die and the world ends. Whatever becomes of them would depend on what happens to their maker. The extent of the existence of an imagined character is in the mind of real persons after all.

I can only speculate on what may become of them in the next life (I’m pretty sure I’ll be pleasantly surprised however that may be) but I think I can stop worrying about their “fate”. I mean, we’ll certainly remember our lives (including whatever characters an artist or storyteller created while alive) in heaven sooo, they shouldn’t exist any less than they do in this life