JR Woodward :: Blog :: Imagination Needed

  Morning Street 
  Originally uploaded by Jon .

For the last couple of years I have been asking God to teach me, to guide me, to help me birth something new, something fresh, something life-giving.  Giving birth always involves pain.  Giving birth involves waiting.  Giving birth requires a baby to be in the dark.  Giving birth takes time. Giving birth brings joy, because with new birth come new eyes, new ears and a new world.

What I have been thinking about for the last couple of years, I am trying to intensively focus on for the next few days in particular.  I will be immersing myself in a cocoon of study, swimming in words of missional eccleisiology, with the hopes that God would plant some fresh seeds in my heart that would birth something new. For the purpose of being in a cocoon is not to stay there, but to come out as something different.

One book I am engaging with now is Kester Brewin's book signs of Emergence.  It is a book that contains story and poetry in a way to open up our imagination.  Imagination is one of the things needed in the church today.  Here is one poem from his book worth contemplating, and a prayer from Vaux liturgy.

THE GREAT REVERSAL
Walking with the crowds
Carried along by the pressing forward.
Each one eager to get ahead
But each one starting the same:
Born as a baby, and from then on, struggling towards
       meaning, power and influence.
Be someone
Be remembered
Make a big impression
Leave some indelible mark in your 3 score years and 10

From birth, a struggle to find eternity, to burst
      through life with such dazzling intensity, that
      everyone will remember forever.
But walking the other way, picking out a route
      against the crowds, a solitary figure passes me...
      passes all of us - all straining away innocence, to
      be someone,
And he passes us, a quiet chaos in the crowd.

Christ, eternal, omniscient, creator, beyond time,
      source of wisdom and beyond petty claims of
      influence... in very nature God, slips into reverse
      and walks back past us - away from Kingship,
      away from power, away from influence, away from
      eternity, away from wisdom... towards infancy.
Calmly stepping into the body of a tiny child.

And even as this baby grows, figuring out how to control
      the body he himself designed, he still walks the
      other way, realizing that life cannot be found in the
      struggle for permanence, but in giving it up.

This Great Reversal subverts me.  Tired of pressing
      forward, I realize I need to turn, for what I have
      been searching for has just walked past me the
      other way.   

PRAYER
Infinite God we have struggled to make our marks on this world.
We confess that this has often led to trampling on others;
rushing for seats on the train; pushing in front; me first.
Infinite God teach us about the great reversal; lead us into self-less-ness.
In this city straining towards success help us to live a different way in the simple things: courtesy, honesty, humility.

Crucified God in the bread we remember your body broken,
given up so that we might live. In eating it we commit to the way of sacrifice.
In the wine we remember your blood shed,
poured out to reverse our wrong doings. In drinking it we commit to the way of forgiveness.

Amen.