Minds Eye by Kim Kankiewicz
Close your eyes and think of an apple. What do you see? If you’re like most people, you see a piece of fruit, probably red, maybe with a jaunty green leaf protruding from the stem. If you’re like me, you see the inside of your eyelids. (Also, you hear an inner voice say, “Picture an apple.”)
I only recently learned that other people see literal mental images and that my inability to do so makes me atypical. According to a 2018 Scientific American article, I have a condition with a name, aphantasia. The article assures me, based on MRI studies, that my brain can use other strategies to perform visual tasks and that aphantasia doesn’t seem to impair creativity.
The idea that creativity might rely on literal vision strikes me as…unimaginative, not least because it excludes people without sight. I’ve lived with uncertainty about my eyesight since childhood, and I am currently 100% blind in my right eye. It never occurred to me to worry about the blindness in my mind’s eye as well. I don’t know if aphantasia correlates with visual impairment, but it seems evident that the ability to form mental images depends on having seen those images in the first place. “Having seen” hardly bears out as a prerequisite for creativity.
Our imaginations are so limited that we can’t imagine imagining without eyesight. The very word imagination refers to visual imagery, as do other words we use to describe our mental fancies. We picture, envision, and visualize. We see with our mind’s eye. And then we use magnetic resonance imaging to see what parts of our brains light up as if we can’t be sure a thought exists unless we see a spark.
Isn’t this an analogy for faith? We can’t comprehend what we can’t perceive, and we don’t trust what we can’t comprehend. No wonder Isaiah thought it worth telling us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. No wonder Paul had to remind us that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor human mind conceived the things God has prepared for us. Thank God for God’s patience with our limitations and the limitlessness of God’s imagination!