We had
breakfast with some new Peterborough friends this week. We met at a Poetry Slam
and got talking and laughing and found we had lots in common. Except for one
thing. We are “church people” and they are not. They are musicians, among other
things, so they came out to church one morning to check out our “gig”.
At breakfast
we got talking about Imagination and Intuition. She told stories of using song
lyrics to get school drop-out students to start writing about soul matters. He
told us stories of relying on intuition to let business deals emerge from the
midst of problems. Instead of rushing in with brainy solutions, he’d keep
people talking, keep them relaxed, and let imagination work its way up from
their midst. The outcome, he described, was always something he’d never have
come up with on his own. It would emerge from the ether.
As artists
they could also relate to the experience of inspiration. How a tune, a lyric, a
character, a plot, or an image can emerge from that “somewhere else” source.
Most artists – the ones whose egos don’t get in way - will give credit for
their best ideas to the “wherever it comes from”.
More and more
I find that I’m using the word Imagination interchangeably with the word
Spirit. It’s not just that God gives us the gift of imagination. But that God
is Imagination.
Let’s turn
around and reclaim our “imaginary God”. It’s not that God comes from our
imaginations, but that we come from God’s. Genesis says that we are made, male
and female, in the “image” of God. That image is imagination. It is when we are
in touch with the flow of creativity, the stirring of visions, the expressing
the images in word, canvas and dance that we participate in the divine
identity.
This is hardly
an original idea. But like the best of all ideas – it comes out of that vast
deep underworld, underwater, ancient and ever-renewing source. The more we tap
into it. The more we experience it. The more we learn to trust in it’s
leadings.
“All dreams
come from God.” I was taught. It’s just another way of saying when we turn off
our rational, thinking, monkey-minded processing machine we call the brain, God
takes over. We are fed otherworldly images, scenarios – silly, frightening,
funny and profound – that speak to our flat-footed days if we have the ears and
imaginations to listen. All humans dream - but who listens to what God's saying?
I once had an
interview with a Neuroscientist. He sat with us to explain that our son’s Down
Syndrome brain would be smaller and less capable than normal. I asked how that
would affect his Imagination? This brain surgeon looked at me with a puzzled
expression and said “I’ve never thought about that.”
Do our
Church’s brain surgeons ever wonder about the power of imagination? As our
church’s shrink and shrivel. As our capacities to solve problems and muscle our
way into making the world a better place diminish – are we trying to think too
hard?
One of the
reasons we don’t find a lot of artists in church is that they’re not real big
on fitting into boxes. Anything with a label on it is suspect. Calling
themselves a Christian, let alone a Baptist, Catholic, or Progressive is just
another way of limiting imagination.
But that’s how
we organize ourselves we say. How else could we work? How else would we know
who we are and who we’re not?
Good question.
Maybe we could use a little imagination? Instead of praying what we think – how
about playing with that divine source of ideas? Instead of making slightly
bigger boxes for that un-nameable source of joy, why not free the slaves of
conformity and paint a picture big enough for the world in a nutshell?
As my new
friend wrote “Curiosity killed the Cat-holic in me”.
Good thing
cats have nine lives. To all you cats out there who care, who are open to
Spirit and creating new possibilities every day…I say…stay curious, stay loose,
laugh, and let the spirit do what it does – create and re-create.
Jesus was the
Master in the art of making community. He never stuck a label on it. It was
Paul who set up the art school. It was Rome who branded it, franchised it, and
put it in the hands of Neurosurgeon Priests who made it into a global corporation.
When the
church kills off your best ideas, throw them seventeen more. Make those brain
surgeons looking for solutions in our best practices and bank accounts wonder
why you’re dancing while the world is burning.
It’s when we
wonder, stop counting the stars and listen to their song in the dark silence
between, that we begin to sing along with the angels. We let ego fall to the
ground like leaves fertilizing next years new ideas. We know beyond reckoning
that there’s no end to the muse that makes humans divine. The kindom of the
storyteller is here already. It’s just waiting for you to express it in your
own special way. The world’s your stage. Go play.
thanks to the Naked Pastor for the cartoon
www.nakedpastor.com
1 comment:
Thanks alleycat:
Reading your blog is like a cool glass of water on a hot day.
Church, creativity . . .
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