I’m giving some talks on the imagination and spirituality next month, and have been doing a few video rehearsals for a talk I’m facilitating next month on the restoration of the imagination in people and cities. I’m going to put up a few here, just for fun, as I re-explore this life theme again! These little rehearsals are helping me hone the basics on the relationship between our imaginations and our spirituality. One of my favorite life topics.

Being the son of a minister and an artist, I’ve worked on allowing my spirituality and my art to come under the same roof. How our art and spirituality are meant to relate and integrate, has always captivated and contained me. To find an authentic context where the two can converse freely, has been one of my lifeworks.

Enjoy my serious side, it’s rare. Quite serious this fellow! And yet (as Basho, the japanese poet used to say, and yet…despite himself, he’s got something to say). Probably preaching to the Christian choir though on these. At least the in house artists.

For those outside of a christian frames, sorry if the language is an unnecessary stumbling block. It’s important to find the right Stone to stumble on in life! Hope the language is not to narrow or vapid, or insular, to hold the gold, as they say! I’m speaking to a group of artist who happen to be christian (or their spirituality is centered in Christ, i mean, not just the culture of christianity or the art world’s; Christ Himself, turns out to be a bit different and larger than christian and art cultures), so it’s framed accordingly. Rehearsal videos to follow!

Lots of christians don’t think of the imagination as central in their spirituality, but i do, because that’s where i first met God. Since, then, i’ve tried to figure out why that part of being human matters, and can be a place of meeting and transformation. I studied arts and healing partly to figure out how art can be a place of healing ourselves and one another. Still circling around that theme years later! I’m still trying to bring art and the church under the same metaphysical and mystical roof, so to speak-the House of God not made with hands!

The basics of my talk is about the imagination being larger than art and the church: that it’s a part of being human, part of how we know, a part of Reality itself, and part of what is meant to be engaged in a loving transformative relationship with God who is One, and is making us one or integrated, including our spiritual perceptions. That, as CS Lewis said, our imaginations are meant to be baptized and engaged in the sanctification process, or process of being made whole. The imagination is a meeting place, not a factory for Jesus propaganda, but a tabernacle of meeting and being transformed in the chapel of intimacy with our creativity!

Looking at the human need to integrate our imaginations into our spiritualities, especially for christians who often struggle with a poverty of imagination. Or un-engaged creativity. The theme of bringing the whole self into relationship with God.

Our imaginations are also part of how we know and interpret things. So we need a baptized imagination even to interpret today’s news well. And to overcome a pornographic or narcissistic view of the world around us. It’s part of how we know, part of being human, and part of what we bring into the banquet of a friendship type intimacy with God, who created it all, as a sort of autobiography!

Anyways enjoy my rehearsals, as I try to get to some of my passion topics in life! I think I’ll probably just facilitate a conversation on the topic rather than tell people what I think, as invitations, are often better than lectures, but these little videos contain a bit of what I’m thinking as basic or essential, towards a theology of the imagination from a christian framework.

Thanks for your patience, as I practice! Videos to follow as i get them up and down loaded! Forgive the long intro, just trying to frame some goodness this season! Hope it blesses you wherever you’re at on the long journey home.