IMAGINE THAT!

Single again, I pulled up stakes in Winnipeg several decades ago and bought a one-way bus ticket to Washington DC to volunteer with the Church of the Saviour. I stayed about a year that time and went back for a couple of 3-month stints later on, the last one with Tammy as well. What drew me to that remarkable little faith community in the first place was reading about it in several books written by one of its staff members, Elizabeth O’Connor – or Betty O, as she was more familiarly and affectionately called down there.

I did get to meet the author a couple of times – as my volunteer work was in a coffeehouse-bookstore that sold her books – but never to the point that I felt I could call her by so familiar a name. She was becoming quite frail during the time I was there because she had been diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer and simply didn’t have the strength most days to be out and about. After she died, I was able to join the community in celebrating her remarkable gifts during the spreading of her ashes on the front lawn of the “headquarters building” of the church, which housed offices, meeting rooms, and a worship space – though the real work of the church (and much of its worship) happened in many other locations scattered throughout the Adams-Morgan district of DC where the church continues to serve.

A mutual friend recounted a visit she made to Elizabeth O’Connor’s apartment one day to check in on her. Her faltering voice called “come in” at my friend’s knock and when she entered she found Elizabeth propped up in a big armchair with a beatific smile spreading across her face. My friend told me that when she asked her if she was interrupting something, she replied, “Oh no, I am so happy to see you. I am just sitting here contemplating my heavenly home.” I wonder where her imagination was taking her.

I have been thinking about imagination these days and the many places it can take us and the rich dimensions of life it can explore and uncover. Take “our heavenly home” as one example, not that this is my point in itself. There are clichéd versions of what that may be and several “official” versions offered to us to accept. I doubt that Elizabeth O’Connor felt any compulsion to limit her imagination to just those options. Maybe she was thinking about what kind of bookstores there were there or if they had her favorite flavour of ice cream or of how racial and cultural and gender and economic divisions in this world are unknown in that realm or maybe about friends and family members or historical and mystical figures she would meet there or how time is swallowed up in eternity so that all things past and future become simultaneously present there or about a kind of existence so unlike what we know here that only art or music or poetry could even begin to express where her imagination was taking her.

What I have also been thinking about is how, at some point in the wandering of our Christian imaginations over the centuries, certain people and groups have decided to stop imagining, cut off a slice, and turn that slice into fixed doctrine that may or may not have any resemblance to the reality behind what it is trying to define and which, at the same time, stunts the imagination of others from exploring further and discovering more. In all things spiritual, I am inclined to think that imagination is more important than doctrine in talking about matters beyond our human ken.

Just one example. I am pretty sure Jesus of Nazareth really did live and actually did die a brutal death by crucifixion at the hands of Roman occupiers in collusion with the local religious authorities in Jerusalem. The image of his death has sparked much imaginative exploration afterwards, leading many different people and groups into many different and fascinating directions trying to fathom its significance. Then, in the 11th century, Anselm wrote about where his imagination was taking him in regard to the meaning of the death of Jesus. Unfortunately, that slice of Anselm’s imagination seemed to stunt any further imagining so much so that, ever since, his doctrine of substitutional or satisfaction atonement has become almost the only way subsequent generations – including ours – have been allowed to think about the crucifixion. Those whose imaginations might lead them elsewhere are often dismissed as heretics or simply written off as “not true Christians”.

You can research more about Anselm and his thoughts about atonement if you want to but my point is not focused on that one example of the stifling of imagination by turning a slice into doctrine. Rather, I want to encourage us and the whole church to hold doctrine lightly and allow our imaginations to flow more freely again on any aspect of the Universal Mystery. Anselm was a profound thinker and a gifted writer and we need to respect his (and others’) contributions in our quest for understanding. But that quest should not end at any one rest stop along the way but continue to uncover more and more of the richness of any subject or theme that profoundly stimulates the human imagination and impacts actual existential living. During this time of the dying and rising of the church, we need the free flow of imagination as much and maybe more than ever before as we explore anew the richness that can be revealed through the Christ story.

AFTERLIFE
A painting by Scott Wilson

Peace to You Ted Hicks