In yesterday’s post I mentioned some words and phrases that I’d been mulling over a little bit but hoped to mull over more this holiday weekend. I think I’d like to start with the thread of imagination.
Somewhere along the way, from some book I no longer remember, I learned that faith and imagination are intimately tied together. And that’s not just the “artistic” idea of the imagination. It’s something like Charles Taylor’s “social imaginary” idea: the way you perceive and sense the world to be, the way you understand it working or not. As a Christian, my belief in things I cannot see, that have been passed down by those who saw and heard and touched, that have been confirmed in odd but comforting ways in my own experience, requires a constant act of imagination, to believe things are a particular way even when there can be little or no evidence for it in the moment.
The Bible, of course, trains us in seeing the world by faith, gives us the stars and constellations, locations and the map, to serve as the framework for living from this life to the next. The church is supposed to help hold this vision together for us, to make it visible in ways no other place or people can. Even still, things like instrumentalization tend to get in the way of some of that vital vision-casting.
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This next week in chapel we’re starting our “Advent” series. Sure, it’s a week early, but that’s okay (as we end the semester before Advent’s end). Tonight at dinner I reread C. S. Lewis’s “The World’s Last Night” as a way of getting a layer or two added to my thinking. I actually think of the essay often, particularly what it says about the role of apocalyptic literature in 1st century Judaism and early Christianity. The return of Jesus, which is often the focus of the first half of Advent, is a significant Christian belief that should shape our imagination. It’s also a belief that we don’t quite know what to do with at times, that Lewis correctly notes that we too easily write off as the product of an unnecessarily apocalyptic kind of literature specific to that particular time. Then Lewis asserts:
our Lord’s production of something like the other apocalyptic documents would not necessarily result from His supposed bondage to the errors of his period, but would be the Divine exploitation of a sound element in contemporary Judaism: nay, the time and place in which it pleased Him to be incarnate would, presumably, have been chosen because, there and then, that element existed, and had, by His eternal providence, been developed for that very purpose.
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I want my mind and heart to be shaped by the stories and words of the Bible, so many of the images that get caught up in John’s Revelation when the Story comes to an end. And then I want to live out of that imagination, knowing that it is rooted in a True Story deeper than that which is so easily seen.
These last few weeks have been a reminder of the frustration that comes with being busier than you ever intended to be. In the midst of it all came news of the death of Eugene Peterson, who has probably shaped more of my understanding of church work than anyone else (he gives hands and feet to things that you get a sense of from thinkers like Nouwen or Bonhoeffer). One of Peterson’s best short pieces (and there are many) is “The Unbusy Pastor,” which I read in The Contemplative Pastor and which started making the rounds again online in the wake of Peterson’s passing. It’s a convicting piece that I’d thought I’d gloss on some over the next few days.
I don’t remember how I found the works of Eugene Peterson, but I’m glad I did. Peterson joined Tozer, Bonhoeffer, and Buechner in what I would call the first reading trajectory that took me beyond what was popular at the area Family Christian story. I remember two of his books in particular: The Contemplative Pastor and Subversive Spirituality. It was Peterson who introduced me to the idea of “spiritual direction,” something I still consider vital (and too infrequent) today. His ideas of “subversiveness” and the “apocalyptic” really helped open my eyes to an itch I was feeling about church work that was good to have scratched.
Yesterday professor and author James K. A. Smith announced his move from Comment Magazine to Image Journal. Smith was a big draw to Comment for me, so his loss there is significant. At the same time, I’m curious to see what he does at Image, which “was founded in 1989 to demonstrate the continued vitality and diversity of contemporary art and literature that engage with the religious traditions of Western culture.” It should be a good fit for Smith, particularly as it seems like a number of other new faces are joining the journal.
As with many other areas of life, education tends to be a perpetual victim of trends and fads. Unmoored from any deep-rooted principle or practice, the contemporary classroom and campus now finds itself blown here and there by whatever assertions are made by “the powers that be” in the world of books and best practices.
Space Enough, and Time 