About 2 months ago I was sitting in a cafe in the heart of the Andes next to Elmo from Sesame Street, feeling my imagination being recharged. The cafe, Yanapay, is part of a wider community project and they’ve designed the whole place to re-create what childhood should look like. It’s bursting with life and colour and optimism (and stuffed toys like Elmo); just being there filled me with unexpected hope. I had found some people who could still imagine a different life being possible, and who were getting on and creating it.
I see that same mad imagination in Shane Claiborne’s stories. Here are a bunch of 20 somethings pulling out of the rat race, managing to think outside all the assumptions of American culture, building something different and beautiful. How do they think it all up?
It reminded me of something I read in a book a while ago:
“vanquished peoples are not really subjects of the empire until their imagination has been taken captive… as long as they harbour dreams of a social reality alternative to the empire, they are a threat to the empire. Their liberated imagination keeps them free…”
Talk of empires sounds grand, but the book (which is a study of Colossians) draws a huge parallel between the Roman Empire (context of most of the NT) and the prevailing powers of globalisation, post-modernism and consumerism which is our reality. How free am I from this empire? I thought my imagination was doing ok until I sat in that cafe in Peru and experienced its resuscitation.
Living in London in 2008 means being constantly (& inescapably) fed a series of images and stories which want to capture my imagination and convince me that life is a quest for personal happiness and satisfaction. I don’t even notice much anymore. But there’s the danger.
We live only what we first imagine is possible. The fight for our imaginations has infinite consequences.
I want my imagination to be soaked in God’s dazzling, brilliant and subversive kingdom, so that I can live it and build it. How?
Realities like Shane Claiborne describes, or like I saw in Yanapay, don’t come from no-where. I think our imaginations are famished, and we need to learn to feed them (instead of just feeding our wardrobes and our bellies and our diaries). The same book I read says:
“Israel understood the dynamics of empire and imagination and always had a counterplan. In the shadow of empire, Israel’s prophets wrote evocative and subversive poetry that wove together images of homecoming, restoration, dimly burning wicks, free food and a coming Messiah who would do a new thing.”
Let’s read about the counterplan, look for where its touching the world, tell it, go visit it. Lets dream it up together and plot and scheme it into reality. Let’s recharge our imaginations.
ACTION POINTS: feed your imagination
1. Can you think of someone you know living or working with imagination in a way that reminds you what the kingdom of God looks like? Go hang out with them for a while and feed your imagination.
2. Listen to one of the interviews with Kay Warren, Rob Bell or Shane Claiborne from Teartimes online to see how they’re trying to be imaginative, www.tearfund.org/News/Tear+Times+online/
3. Tell a good friend about how you’d most like to see God’s kingdom becoming a reality in our midst (where, with who, why?).
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