Working With Soul:
Turn Your Imagination into Imagi-action

Story has it that after graduation, Dewitt Jones, one of America’s top professional photographers, and a few college buddies were relaxing and dreaming about their futures. Jones could have gone to law school, like his father expected, but that would have been a vocation: what he had to do, what they paid him to do. But ah, if he set HIS dream free, if he did what he could not help but do, what he was born to do, what set his mind ablaze with possibility he’d “be in pictures.”

With mustered courage, Jones pitched his “picture idea” to National Geographic. They bought the concept, but not him—their trained staff would bring his vision to life. Jones said, “No way.” He went home, rethought his approach and went back—this time to visit the “main cheese.”

The rest is history. As a motion picture director, he had two films nominated for Academy Awards® before he was thirty, was with National Geographic for twenty years and now teaches how the powerful force of vision can transform lives. After vision, then what?

“Train your technique.” Jones says. Vision is great but you have to move from imagination to “imagi-ACTION” (as Jones calls it). Study techniques so you can DO:

You’ve seen people like that.You know exactly what he’s talking about. When Jones sold his vision to National Geographic, he knew zilch about lights, cameras, directing, etc. How hilarious. How absurd to think, even for a moment, that he could pull this off. Well, he did pull it off by taking off to Hollywood to study the craft of filmmaking. He moved from vision to action.

You and I are not called upon to be a ‘Dewitt Jones.’ We are called, however, if only in a small way, to fan the embers of our heart’s desire. In the mid-eighties, my soul was hungry—no, parched—to be connected to a supportive community of women, for laughing and learning, for healing and growing toward life, work and spiritual wholeness. Was such a community out there? I didn’t see it.

Whining about my need, I remember the exact spot on Interstate 77 God said to me, “OK, so you’re not equipped to lead such a group. What can you do?” I said, “I could create and print an invitation. I could invite some women. Offer my home. Make the coffee. I could even ask capable Mary-Lynn (a neighbor) to lead.” He said, “Then, do it.” And here I am today, still doing: studying, training, inviting.

Do you have a dream ember begging to be fanned? I bet you do. What can you do this week to move your imagination to imagi-ACTION? What can you do to train your technique, to study your craft? Do it. Forget about all the reasons you can’t. Do what you can. That will be enough. As you do, the next step will appear, and then the next. Who knows? Someday, you may “be in pictures.”

I’ll share more from Jones next time.