SAVING IMAGINATION

By Rev. Kim Wells

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” [Quoted in interview by G.S. Viereck , October 26,1929. Reprinted in “Glimpses of the Great”(1930)., accessed on line] This quote is from Albert Einstein, some would say the most gifted scientist that has ever lived. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

We know how important imagination is to science. The open mind willing to see new patterns contained in information, willing to posit new ideas about the world and then to test them. Imagination brought us the understanding that the world is not flat but round, and that the earth orbits the sun, not vice versa. Imagination through science has brought us knowledge of the atom and knowledge of the ever-expanding universe. Imagination has taught us to see energy as wave and particle. And we can only speculate about what there still is to learn about the world and life when the imagination is fully engaged.

Imagination is key to technology, a branch of applied science. Digital music, biomedical developments, cell phones. These things were incomprehensible to people just 100 years ago. In 1969, I visited my family in Germany and my uncle had one of two telephones in the town, both landlines. People came to the door of the house, knocked and paid a small fee to make a phone call. And now, less than 50 years later, people have cell phones everywhere and anywhere in the world. Who could have imagined this? Someone imagined the internet into existence. It would be absolutely inconceivable to my grandparents that such a system could be developed. Virtually all of human knowledge and information at your fingertips in the privacy of your own home 24/7? And yet, here it is and we are dependent upon the internet in just such a short time.

Imagination inspires business. FedEx imagined next business day delivery anywhere. And the company continues to imagine. The FedEx website tells us:

It’s clear that at FedEx, innovation is in our DNA. All employees are tasked with innovation as part of their day-to-day job. But there’s one group focused solely on developing future game-changing ideas: FedEx Innovation. FedEx Innovation is a cross-discipline team aimed at identifying emerging customer needs and technologies to change what’s possible through innovative solutions and businesses. The team systematically researches and demonstrates bold new concepts in key opportunity spaces and develops the best concepts with accelerated prototyping, incubation, and commercialization. [fedex.com]

That is imagination at work.

We know how important imagination is to the arts. Imagination brings us great visual art, dance, drama, literature, and music. The world would be bereft without the beauty, revelation, expression, insight, and delight of the arts fueled by the imagination.

Imagination can motivate our behavior and shape our reality. Garrison Keillor, of “A Prairie Home Companion,” tells of the power of imagination to fuel our fears. The parents have gone over to a friends’ house, leaving the kids at home alone.

It was getting dark and we were discussing our greatest fears over

French Silk pie when the phone rang. It was the kids. ‘The news guy said that there are thieves in the night and he’ll tell us where at ten. What if they come to our house?’ I told them to relax and there aren’t any thieves outside but lock the doors and turn on a light or two so you feel better, and have some butter brickle ice cream. The kids are old enough to be home alone, but young enough to flip out on occasion if they let their imaginations take over.

When we pulled into the driveway an hour or so later, every light in the house was on. The doors were all locked, and both TVs were on, and the kids were nowhere to be seen. I went upstairs and their beds were still made and I was a bit perplexed. Then I heard Mr. Sundberg holler from the kitchen. When I got there, he pressed his finger to his lips and pointed to the pantry. There they were, all three of ’em, bundled up in the blue blanket from the hall closet, sound asleep on the pantry floor. There were flashlights and books scattered over the blanket, and all three of them had faint white lines above their upper lips. Ice cream mustaches. Butter brickle. [www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/sundberg/2007/01/29.shtml ]

Imagination can fuel our fears. It can be a great motivating force for human behavior, for good and for ill. Some world leaders imagine unrestrained power or wealth. Stalin imagined a Soviet Union unified under his personal control. And he killed multitudes of people in his effort to fulfill the designs of his imagination. Hitler imagined a Germany, a Europe with no Jews, no “undesirables,” peopled by a master race and governed by him. There are those today who are also fueled by evil imaginings.

World leaders can also be inspired in positive ways by imagination. In Cuba, Fidel Castro imagined a country in which everyone is not only literate but well educated, everyone has access to healthcare, all people have food, a home, and meaningful work that makes a contribution to society. He imagined a society in which the common good is the motivating force for all policies and personal behavior. He also imagined a country which reaches out to help other countries which Cuba does by sending doctors all over the world. Cuba has doctors assisting with health care in over 40 countries around the world. Castro was propelled by the power of his imagination to lead his country in a certain direction.

In a TV show I saw this week about President Kennedy, it was mentioned that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy dealt with Nikita Khrushchev working from the assumption that Khrushchev wanted peace for his children just as Kennedy did. And evidently Kennedy worked from this premise even though there had been no direct indication of this from Khrushchev. Kennedy imagined that as a human being, as a leader, as a father, Khrushchev would want peace for the children of his country as much as Kennedy wanted peace for the children of the US. This imagining contributed to averting a nuclear war.

Imagination is powerful and can be a force for good in the world. Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, imagined a world in which everyone has a home. Habitat’s vision: “a world where everyone has a decent place to live.” [habitat.org] Mother Teresa imagined a world in which no one dies alone and unloved. Thus imagination bears the fruit of goodness in the world.

Imagination has been a major aspect of the many religions that have emerged in the course of human history. Religion and various gods gave people a way to imaginatively explain how and why things happened as they did such as where the world came from and why it rained. Religion took over answering questions that empirical experience could not resolve.

We see the power of imagination at work in the scriptures of our religious tradition. The Bible is filled with imaginative, evocative descriptions and stories intended to impart a certain world view, insights about human existence, and guidelines for ethical behavior. In the passage we heard this morning from the prophet Isaiah, we hear a vision of the world as God intends it to be. This vision is given to people who have lived under subjugation, as refugees in a foreign land. In the rich imagery of the passage we are told of a new beginning. This vision is given to people who are from Jerusalem and have seen their city destroyed and lying in ruins. There will be a new city, a place of joy. People will thrive there and live well and long. We are told that they will build houses and live in them and tend vineyards and eat the fruit of the land. In captivity in Babylon, they built houses for their captors, they tended fields of food for there conquerors. But in Isaiah’s imaginative vision of what is to come, they live in their own land, build their own houses, eat the food that they produce. They are not oppressed by others, they are living justly. Then we are given the imaginative zoological vision of this new world of peace – the wolf and the lamb eat together, the lion eats straw like the ox. There is no pain or destruction in this new earth. Imagination fuels this vision of hope. It gives the people something to believe in, to trust, to live for, to work for. This beautiful vision will sustain the people as they endure the long, grueling process of making a new home from the rubble. They imagine how glorious it will be and they have the wherewithal to keep on keeping on thanks to Isaiah’s vision.

Our scriptures are full of imaginative evocative images and stories that tell us about the world and ourselves and what the world can be. The creation story, the flood, the tower of Babel, the exodus from Egypt, in story after story in the Hebrew scriptures there are imaginative renderings of the complicated nuanced relationship between God and humanity. In the New Testament, particularly in the gospels, Jesus is portrayed using imaginative stories to teach people about God, life, community, solidarity, and justice. A widow searches for a coin. A father forgives a wayward child. A small man climbs a tree. A storm is stilled. Scripture is imbued with imagination because imagination is a gift of God to the human species to be used to form and shape us as individuals and as communities fulfilling God’s intentions for creation.

The role of imagination in our faith tradition is also quite complicated. Our scriptures are rife with imaginative images. Yet the church has sought to provide answers, to create rules to be followed. The church has created doctrine and dogma to define and describe. These things are fixed and determinative. Not matters that invite imaginative thinking, but rather that offer a clear cut structure of belief so that one knows where one stands. A clearly defined belief system is easier to convey and to control. This gives the institution of the church and its leaders more power. The church gives people the rules and regulations governing moral behavior and salvation. There is little left to the imagination.

In religion of recent times, there has been a greater embracing of literalism in some expressions of Christianity. This is a fairly new development in our faith – within the last 100 to 150 years. Up until that time, the vast majority of Christians knew that the Bible was intended to instruct through story and the power of the images used. It was not assumed to be necessarily factually true. That really didn’t matter. It was the meaning of the story or the image that mattered, not whether it actually happened or was going to happen, but what did it mean? But with literalism, again, this simplified explanation, makes it easier to describe and define. It reduces the search for multiple meanings and contextualization and application to the current situation. Make everything cut and dried. “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” as the bumper sticker says.

Thus religion can actually be a force for stifling imagination. It can undermine free and imaginative thinking. While this may be aimed at discouraging imagination from inspiring evil, it also conspires to stifle the good. And ultimately will stifle the saving power of the church in the world all together because the church will make itself obsolete and irrelevant. Yet a church inspired by imagination, as we see from the ministry of Jesus, has the power to save. It has the power to motivate us to work for good in the world, to serve with compassion, to develop new ways to live together with all kinds of other people in peace. Our faith tradition has the power to compel us to create a world that is just and fair in which all people are treated with dignity and respect. We have the stories and images in our scripture to generate that kind of creativity from the church. Jesus shows us the God of love at the heart of the universe through story and image and parable and deed. He imaginatively reveals the love of God present in all people and in the world. This love has the power to overcome all the evil humanity can concoct. But the power of love is communicated through the imagination inspiring us to live and act in ways that convey that message. Facts and figures and rules and regulations alone cannot inspire that kind of action. As 20th century writer H.L. Mencken has observed, “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” It is imagination that can motivate us to do what is good and true.

This past week, we watched the movie, “Chasing Ice.” It is a beautiful film about a man’s calling to imaginatively impact the world in a way that makes people care about global climate change and want to do something about it. This is done with images – a word with the same root as imagination. Studies and findings and measuring haven’t had the impact needed. So James Balog turns to image, to story. That’s what has the power to change people’s minds and hearts. That’s what has the potential to influence behavior. A person interviewed in the movie transitions from working for Shell Oil to being an environmental advocate.

Instead of fearing the imagination, the church needs to embrace the power of imagination. Instead of trying to control, the church needs to unleash the imaginative stories of scripture and faith to inspire people to create a new future.

We mentioned Fed Ex having an innovation team built into its corporate structure. I imagine a church with an innovation team – cross disciplinary, aimed at identifying new needs and technologies and to offer new solutions. I imagine a church where the leaders research and demonstrate bold new concepts in theology and liturgy and structure and mission. I would like to be part of a church identifying key opportunity spaces and developing best concepts with accelerated prototyping and incubation for promoting anti violence. I would like to see imagination brought to bear not only on the way the church packages its message, but on the message itself. Innovation and imagination in conveying the message of unconditional love, forgiveness, grace, and the sacredness of life that is at the heart of the ministry of Jesus. I would like to see a church boldly imagining a world where everyone has what they need to flourish and no one is a victim of the greed and abuses of others. I would like to see a church boldly innovating in ways that imaginatively create a Christianity without exclusivism and without a superiority complex. A Christianity focused on the creating new systems of community and social and economic models that eliminate poverty and all kinds of discrimination. I would like to see an imaginative expression of Christianity that does not make faith and science an either/or proposition but a both/and proposition. We can give people facts until the cows come home, but that will not necessarily change hearts and minds. That will not create meaning and justice in human culture. Facts and information alone cannot inspire us to seek our highest good. That requires imagination. Humanity’s greatest accomplishments – scientific, social, and cultural – are all rooted in the power of the imagination.

To deny the power of imagination is to take the air out of the balloon of our faith. It is to deny God – the Creator, the great imagination, and it denies the concept that humans are created in God’s image, intended to be imaginative co-Creators with God. To ignore or minimize or denigrate the imagination is to unplug the power for good that is inherent in the way of Jesus and in our faith.

The prophet Isaiah invites us to be creative. To imagine another world, a better world, into being. To persist in pursuing justice and peace. To imagine children cared for and flourishing and old people living rich and full lives to the end. To imagine food and shelter and safety for all. To imagine self determination and freedom to live and thrive. Imaginative visions and dreams have the power to literally change the

world.

There’s a story told of two men who shared a room in a hospital ward. The one man had to lie flat on his back at all times for weeks to allow for his healing and recuperation. He was to keep quiet and still. The hours seemed endless. Being consigned to such conditions in the confines of such a small room sapped his spirit. He became discouraged and depressed. Another patient was brought in to the other bed in the room. That patient, too was to be quiet and still. But the new patient was able to sit up in a chair next to the window for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. As he was sitting up, he would describe what he saw out the window to the man who could only lie flat on his back. He would tell of the park outside the window. The children playing, the model boats on the small pond. The ducks and swans. being fed bread by the children. He told of the flowers, the roses, and dahlias, and lilies growing in the park. Of the couples walking hand in hand. He described the matches on the tennis courts, and the soccer games on the field outside the window.

The man on his back began to live for these reports of the park outside the window. Each morning and each afternoon, he would listen to the vivid descriptions of the activities in the park. The child who fell down running on the path. The spectacular block at the soccer goal. The newly hatched ducklings on the pond. The descriptions of life outside the window gave the man something to look forward to, something to live for, a connection to the rest of the world. He began to improve little by little, though he still had to lie on his back completely still.

One night, the roommate, the man who would sit in the chair and tell of life outside the window, was seized by a coughing fit in his sleep, he began choking, and then, suddenly, all was silent. The man had died. His body was taken away quietly.

A few days later, the man on his back asked to be moved to the bed by the window. He hoped to see for himself the park and the pond, and the tennis court and the soccer field. His request was granted. He was moved to the bed by the window. Once he was settled, he asked the nurse to open the curtains so that he could look out the window. He turned his head to take in the view. It was the brick wall of an adjacent building. [Adapted from One Hundred Wisdom Stories from Around the World, by Margaret Silf]

New heavens and a new earth. A city of joy. No cry of distress. Homes and fields. Labor honest and fair. The wolf and the lamb together. A world at peace.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Amen.