As the summer of lots of free time for reading continues, I've just picked up Barbara Brown Taylor's The Preaching Life. It's part memoir, part general commentary on faith and life and preaching...and it's wonderful so far.
The title of chapter 4 is "Imagination", and Taylor asks what it is and why we seem to lose it as we grow older. She points to the way children seem to be more able to employ all their senses, and how children are not constrained by reality, not limited by how things are "actually supposed to be."
I wonder, also, if it has to do with attention and energy. Perhaps we only have so much attention, and the more attention and energy we direct to caring what other people might think, the less we have available for creativity. So, it's not that imagination falls out little by little along with our baby teeth, it's that adults seem less willing to give imagination the space, attention, and energy it needs to thrive.
For better or for worse, children seem to care very little about what others think; or, maybe it just takes a few years for us to deceive them into thinking that they ought to care. In their prime, children are the ones who can spend hours playing with an empty cardboard box, who can easily turn a stick and a blanket into a campsite in the middle of a jungle.
It is possible for adults to also direct more attention and energy to playing and being and less to caring what other people think. There has to be some sort of silent agreement, though. We have to look at the other adults in the room and feel like we've all signed the waiver, the one that says we're all going to act silly and let loose and no one is going to hold it against anyone else once we're done.
I'll admit here that I'm extra-sensitive to caring what other people think (yeah, it's not a good thing. Ugh!), which is in tension with the fact that I love being with kids and I love to play. As a camp counselor for three summers, I felt that I had permission on account of my job title to be silly, use my imagination, and act in a way that might otherwise seem ridiculous. And, more than simply having permission to use my imagination, I was encouraged to do so - the sillier the better! It's one of many reasons that camp, especially church camp, is magical...but that's really another post!
Here's the thing, though - imagination isn't just for church camp. As Taylor writes, "The church's central task is an imaginative one. By that I do not mean a fanciful or fictional task, but one in which the human capacity to imagine - to form mental pictures of the self, the neighbor, the world, the future, to envision new realities - is both engaged and transformed" (41).
When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, imagination is precisely the thing we need to really hear these stories and metaphors. In order to be committed to bringing about the kingdom of God, we have to not be okay with how things are now. We have to be able to imagine what life might be like without racism, without violence, without hate of what's different, without the desire to be exclusive rather that inclusive. And, we have to trust God's vision, trust that things really will be better when all really means all, and everyone is welcome, and no one lives in fear because of the color of his skin, or her sexual orientation, or anything.
I wonder what it would be like if church, as a place and as a people, was included in that waiver. I wonder what it would be like if we allowed our imagination some room to act, without concern for what others might think. And, I wonder what it would be like if we worked together, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to make our imagination about the kingdom of God a reality. On earth as it is in heaven...
The title of chapter 4 is "Imagination", and Taylor asks what it is and why we seem to lose it as we grow older. She points to the way children seem to be more able to employ all their senses, and how children are not constrained by reality, not limited by how things are "actually supposed to be."
I wonder, also, if it has to do with attention and energy. Perhaps we only have so much attention, and the more attention and energy we direct to caring what other people might think, the less we have available for creativity. So, it's not that imagination falls out little by little along with our baby teeth, it's that adults seem less willing to give imagination the space, attention, and energy it needs to thrive.
For better or for worse, children seem to care very little about what others think; or, maybe it just takes a few years for us to deceive them into thinking that they ought to care. In their prime, children are the ones who can spend hours playing with an empty cardboard box, who can easily turn a stick and a blanket into a campsite in the middle of a jungle.
It is possible for adults to also direct more attention and energy to playing and being and less to caring what other people think. There has to be some sort of silent agreement, though. We have to look at the other adults in the room and feel like we've all signed the waiver, the one that says we're all going to act silly and let loose and no one is going to hold it against anyone else once we're done.
I'll admit here that I'm extra-sensitive to caring what other people think (yeah, it's not a good thing. Ugh!), which is in tension with the fact that I love being with kids and I love to play. As a camp counselor for three summers, I felt that I had permission on account of my job title to be silly, use my imagination, and act in a way that might otherwise seem ridiculous. And, more than simply having permission to use my imagination, I was encouraged to do so - the sillier the better! It's one of many reasons that camp, especially church camp, is magical...but that's really another post!
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| Camp Shalom, Maquoketa, IA - Summer 2010 (That's a hippo. Her name is Helena, and my campers took turns babysitting her on hikes.) |
When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, imagination is precisely the thing we need to really hear these stories and metaphors. In order to be committed to bringing about the kingdom of God, we have to not be okay with how things are now. We have to be able to imagine what life might be like without racism, without violence, without hate of what's different, without the desire to be exclusive rather that inclusive. And, we have to trust God's vision, trust that things really will be better when all really means all, and everyone is welcome, and no one lives in fear because of the color of his skin, or her sexual orientation, or anything.
I wonder what it would be like if church, as a place and as a people, was included in that waiver. I wonder what it would be like if we allowed our imagination some room to act, without concern for what others might think. And, I wonder what it would be like if we worked together, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to make our imagination about the kingdom of God a reality. On earth as it is in heaven...
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