| I will add on to Thursday's quote that was to be sent on Friday and wasn't from "Regulation via Imagination" - again from Walter Brueggemann in "An Unsettling God." What we have in the biblical text is a human document, a product of daring, evocative human imagination. But serious readers of this text of human imagination regularly are recruited, in the process of being addressed, to the conviction that what is surely daring artistic human imagination is, at the same time, an act of divine revelation. There is something different here that insists always on being "strange and new." What is revealed here is a Holy One who is undomesticatedly available for dialogic transaction; that because of dialogical transaction, what is revealed here, as well, is mature personhood that is commensurate with the undomesticated fidelity of the Holy One.... the fully formed human person, in this relationship, is one who is engaged in the dialogical transaction of faith and obedience..... Israel had understood that "maturity" as a creature concerns life congruent with the creator God. I judge, moreover, that Israel would further claim that the same "maturity" (completeness, Hebrew tam) may well pertain to every partner of YHWH, every creature - human, nonhuman, Israel, nations - for the creator God summons all creature to maturity. We are a people who are to be in this endless and ongoing dialogue with the God revealed in scripture. Just when we think we are settled and all things are just as we would have them be - there is movement that changes things. That is what comes through honest dialogue. There is much that gives us a foundation upon which we can imagine new life and find ourselves dancing to new tunes. I would submit that this life of dialogue with our God is one in which we need never fear what other may make of the relationship. We do not need to fear imagination. We entertain it and make sure that the imagination of our hearts is always met by the God who is revealed in scripture. The fullness of our humanity is always beyond us but it is always within reach. Just as we are constantly learning more and more about the character of our God, so too are we uncovering more ways to unfold into the maturity of our being. It is and will always be an adventure - full of risk and full of new life. Connection: What is it that helps you along the way of becoming more and more complete? What leads you away from such growth and possibilities? O God, who gifts us with the ability to imagine the life that is more full than the present seems to allow, lead us again through this time in to what will be as your beloved. Amen. |
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