Bryce Courtenay and illustrations by Anie Williams, A Recipe for Dreaming (Camberwell: Penguin, 2007)

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

“Imagination is more important than knowledge” Einstein announced. Imagination also often comes to us in different ways than knowledge. We might be able to acquire lots of knowledge through reading hundreds of pages, listening to lots of people and asking multiple questions. But I am realising imagination is cultivated in other slower, more subtle and often more solitary ways.

In the past I have enjoyed Bryce Courtenay as an author of 500+ page novels.

Last week I discovered his thought in a new genre – a coffee table or gift-type book with 40 reflections, sayings and quotes about creative dreaming. Each double page is accompanied by an awesome illustration or “visual poem” by Anie Williams.

I reflected over Courtenay and Williams’ combination of words and pictures while walking up and down the river at Warburton. It helped me cultivate my imagination, dream and pray, and listen to my wife Jenni over a day of retreat, coffee and cafe meals.

A Recipe for Dreaming offers ingredients for daring, wild and out-of-the-box thinking – following your gut, visualisation, self-affirmation, moving beyond negative self-talk, wise planning, self-discipline and persistence. I found it went beyond trite success-poster sayings on the one hand, and was not as laborious as goal-setting method books on the other.

For me it prompted dreaming about work, ministry, parenting, gardening, holidays, life and friendships. Each of the pages helps points towards dreams about new pathways and outcomes. Not just “What is?” but “What if?”.

As I evaluated options and challenges for the coming year, it inspired me to think big: “Dream the impossible dream and start walking towards it.”

As I considered a big project, it called my bluff and challenged me to go for it: “Why then is it that most people seem to be so afraid of success that they’ll do almost anything to avoid it?”

As I stressed about the competing demands and pressures of everyday life, it reminded me to stay focused: “Life is too short to iron tea towels.”

As I started planning how to make the most of long-service leave, it urged me to consider working on my self: “Add something that makes you more valuable and lovable.”

As I wondered why I sometimes feel overwhelmed, it invited me towards breathing deeply and being content: “Feeling sorry for yourself is the ultimate self-indulgence; being happy in yourself is the ultimate fulfilment.”

As I was tempted by normal career paths, it encouraged me to pursue the wildest unknown way: “One bright, sunny morning you’ll discover the wild and unknown way you took is carpeted with moss and strewn with tiny flowers. It has become a familiar path, a well-trodden direction that has put you miles ahead of anyone else and much, much closer to achieving your once-impossible dream”.

As I worried about the risk and challenges, it encouraged me not to play safe: “When you are skating on thin ice, you may as well tap dance.”

A Recipe for Dreaming was a gift for refocusing and refreshing my enjoyment of life. It would make a wonderful gift of a small book for yourself or a friend to help cook up imagination and capacity for dreaming and an optimistic outlook on life.

Darren trains leaders and missionaries with the Baptist Union of Victoria and Forge Mission Training Network and looks forward to more monthly coffee dates and dreaming retreats up in the hills at Warburton with his wife Jenni.

Darren

Darren Cronshaw

Coordinator of Leadership Training

Baptist Union of Victoria