Imagination Can Be Sanctified | Lessons from the Last 15
Sanctified Imagination in Care
The truth finally came out. Eventually, it always comes out. Like a soundtrack portending something shady is immanent, I had an ominous feeling for a while that something wasn’t right. Then I heard all the damning data from someone close. What else did I need to hear? My imagination had well-marked boundaries that clearly categorized the person as guilty. Case closed, my judgments were just.
Finally, the sinner came and confessed, confirming the worst. It was bad. But, there was more to the story. The new dimensions made the story deeper, broader, older, longer, higher, lower. It also humanized the sinner. He went from monster to man. I could see my own capabilities and culpabilities. It pulled up the stakes of my old imagination boundaries.
“We feed technology what we want to hear, what we want to consume, what we prefer. Then it tells us what we want to hear, what we want to consume, what we prefer.”
God sanctified vast swaths of my imagination, reclaiming it for his mercy instead of my judgment. Now I knew the offender also as the offended. The wounder was also the wounded. The abuser was abused. As always, the grace of absolution was needed, but so was the grace of trauma-healing, the mercy-salve that neutralizes and de-escalates old triggers.
Sanctified Imagination in Community
Netflix’s The Social Dilemma is a terrifying glimpse into the power of algorithms in shaping and, ultimately, limiting our imaginations. Curating our Spotify playlist has escalated into curating our news feed into curating our whole social media experience which is becoming more our real life than, well, our real life. We feed technology what we want to hear, what we want to consume, what we prefer. Then it tells us what we want to hear, what we want to consume, what we prefer. Jacques Ellul, was prophetic, writing decades ago about how technology can become the “principalities and powers” kind of demonic. Tech is demonic when it has a voice, telling you what you can or can not do. In our Regula Vitae, our young adult community’s rule of life, we recognize that “when it makes promises it can become demonic. We will resist giving technology the power to take us out of community, distract us from prayer, or make us a slave in any way. We will put limits on technology instead of the other way around.”
Coronatide compounded by campaign 2020 has ganged up on imagination. Many have become victims of this attack, radicalized away from their family or missing in action from their faith family because they have gone down the partisan wormhole to the left or to the right. Algorithms are destroying our imaginations, radicalizing formerly reasonable people who can no longer imagine that someone different than them might be motivated by something true, something right, something beautiful. In regards to mask-wearing or not, or in regards to voting, “I can’t imagine how anyone could wear a mask / not wear a mask.” Or, “I can’t imagine how anyone in their right mind could vote for Trump / Biden.”
Maybe the failure of imagination is a failure of grace. Our imagination has become a small partisan space instead of a generous grace space. I heard an interview with, what sounded like, a very angry protester. She was brash, harsh and she was loud. Her mind was made up, and so was mine. The interviewer called her a day later to check in with her. There was more to her than her façade. She wasn’t just angry, she was anxious. She wasn’t just loud, she was in love with some things that were true, right, and beautiful. She was afraid of losing them. I’ve been practicing saying, “I can imagine why you are concerned about that.” Or, “I can imagine why you would vote for him.” Using our imagination in this way is an act of grace.
“Maybe the failure of imagination is a failure of grace. Our imagination has become a small partisan space instead of a generous grace space.”
Sanctified Imagination in Prayer
Kids haven’t lost their imaginations, but most adults are dull in this area. But prophets, Pentecostals and Jesuits have great imaginations. Other people couldn’t imagine Ezekiel’s wheels or Isaiah’s Cherubim or the Daughters of Philip’s prophecies of impending famine. But they could after the prophets spoke. I knew about past wounds in my life, but I didn’t know they were loaded with TNT, ready to explode with unrestrained anger or disqualifying lust or some other life-stealing or relationship-destroying decision. Words of knowledge along with inner healing prayer didn’t just identify the past wounds but tenderly disarmed them. Where did that revealing and healing work take place? Some might say, “That is just your imagination.” My response, “Blessed imagination.”
We live in a world, but imagination is a world that lives in us. Jesuits have nurtured that inner world as a sanctified canvas where God can speak and heal and call and convert. Ignatius Loyola’s exercises along with his examen are imagination kindling. Dennis Hamm SJ calls the examen “rummaging for God” as you reflect on the ordinary and daily kinds of experiences and begin to realize that God is present even there. Our community practices the examen every Thursday at Vespers. Every single week, it is amazing to hear how God is at work in the daily exchanges in community, in the conflicts that naturally arise, in the challenges and joys.
Old Protestantism and secularism too often share an unimaginative creed in a disenchanted world. Let the prophets, Pentecostals and Jesuits help us imagine an enchanted world where angels are at work and demons are devising and the unseen is as real as the material and God is Lord of it all. Ephesians 3.20-21 is impossible without using your sanctified imagination, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen”
Lessons from the Last 15 is a series of articles from Pastor Nathan Hoff on the occasion of his 15th year in ministry at Trinity San Pedro.
“It seems like they need me,” I said pretentiously to a dear family I was visiting in the first congregation I served. Just shy of three years at that Call, I broke the news about our upcoming relocation to Southern California. It was the Fall of 2005, and I had recently received and accepted a new Call to Trinity Lutheran in San Pedro, California. How that family managed not to roll their eyes is more impressive as the years go by. I had a lot to learn.
October 31st will mark the 15th anniversary of my installation as pastor at Trinity San Pedro. They didn’t “need” me in the way I thought they might need me. They did need the Gospel, and I needed it too—as desperately as anyone else. I still do and they still do. We are a good match.