As a country, we are being forced to look at our lack of imagination. The current administration closed down agencies designed to prepare us for pandemics; it continues to try the old ways of stimulating the economy regardless of the current Covid-crisis. We all see it isn't working. Racism, sexism, classism - it is all demanding a new vision.
The church fathers from the Amazon begged Rome to use its imagination to see new ways of bringing the Church to the peoples in their part of the world. Again, a lack of imagination. Rome just couldn't see how it could be different. Not daunted, the Amazon church is trying something new.
One answer to these times is found in the hue and cry for more of what was! Everyone in their place. There is a certain gnosticism at work. They have the answers and the rest of us need to learn from them. True for politics or religion.
Many are paralyzed. What can we do, poor individuals that we are, in the face of such massive dysfunction? We care but have no answers. We never had to be creative.
And then there is a third way. What if we listen to one another? Take in the reality right in front of our eyes. What if we truly listened - to on another, to our context, to those not like us - and then listen deeply for the invitation of the Spirit. What if we were able to imagine a better world, a vaster way to be church? T care for one another? What if?
