Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Imagination


"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. Everyone is born with imagination."
"To apprentice oneself to a child is to learn that the world is full of wonders, a world in which nothing is simply what it seems because everything is packed with endless possibilities of usefulness and meaning. To enter that world, all you have to do is surrender your certainty that you already know what everything is and is for; all you have to do is start over again, assuming nothing and learning to approach every created thing with awe."
-Barbara Brown Taylor in The Preaching Life
Have I lost my imagination? When did that happen? When did I decide that I already knew what everything looked like and what it was for? I have a really amazing story to tell and now I get to start at the beginning again. Fun.

1 comment:

  1. Peter,

    The part about imagination that is forgotten may have something to do with the joy and excitment of finding something new, particularly in something old. Finding things within the cloud formations is often a trigger for me to look at old things from a different perspective.

    Thanks for your post.

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