Maybe We Need To Recover Our Imagination
*photo above: Scott Erickson painting during his one-man show “We Are Not Troubled Guests” at NWLife’s Together Night
Sometimes I wonder, have we lost our imagination?
Stewart Henderson, in his poem I Believe says,
Propagandists are
excellent mimics
But don’t expect them to say anything original.
I believe in doubt
I believe doubt is a process of saying
“Excuse me, I have a question.”
Propagandists hate questions
and in so doing
detest art.
I believe in art.
We are so easily tempted to mimic, copy, follow, and accept status quo as reasonable and good enough.
In the church it happens like this: we look to another church in some other part of the state or country that is considered successful because of one or more of the “B’s” – buildings, budgets, and butts-in-seats.
We esteem these other churches as having or being something that we also should have or be. We podcast them. We fly over to them and scribble notes about everything we see and hear. We meet with their leaders to get their secret recipes. And then we bring it home to our state, city, neighborhood.
This whole thing reeks of a lack of imagination to me.
What ever happened to… Read More