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So, today, I bring together these two themes of imaginative artfulness and faithfulness to context. I challenge you in two ways.
First, I urge in some matters regarding the creative, inspired imagination.
1. Remember that knowing something that you cannot objectify takes more faith in our culture than believing in what you can objectify.
2. Remain open to the wonder of the imagination, which is a Divine gift and a means of revelation.
3. Honor the Spirit as wildly free, growing more comfortable with vagueness, uncertainty, and intuitive knowing.
4. Realize that the subjective has truth as true as objective truth.
5. Explore how truth is really pointing to one Truth. Subjectivity and objectivity, rightly understood, are seen to be complementary ways of knowing, not oppositional ways.
Now, I urge you in regard to using your giftedness.
1. See the context Providence places you in as an opportunity to give your gift. Service is simply giving your gift.
2. Respect the context and persons whom are your authorities, unless either so violates basic values to forfeit right of respect.
3. Allow the context to be a place for testing your giftedness.
4. Prayerfully explore how your giftedness is meant to bring blessing to others and transformation to the context.
5. Do not personalize your giftedness, your service, or the results of your Work.
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6. Keep remembering, especially in times of fearfulness or discouragement: “It is not about me.”
7. Pray daily that God will give you grace to gracefully give your giftedness and be, above all, true to God.
8. Remember, God will never fail you. If you have a gift, God will provide the context and grace for you to give it to the Glory of God and the good of others.
Spiritual Exercises
1. How is the contemplative way of knowing reflected in the above writing?
2. Read the opening quote from St. Gregory of Nyssa? What does it say to you about the Mystery of God? Your relationship with that Mystery?
3. Watch “Finding Neverland,” then, reflect on its spiritual lessons.
4. Did Jesus use imaginative teaching or didactic teaching more often?
5. Where are you called to serve? Whom has Spirit given to be your authorities in that context? Can you discern a specific type of persons whom your gifts are called to serve in that context? How might you have to prove your integrity, love, patience, and giftedness to have your gift become transformative for the system?
6. What does “truthfully vague” mean to you?
7. Are you more comfortable with not-knowing or knowing?
8. How does the Christian word “faith, trust” relate to not-knowing? The Buddhist concept “Beginner’s Mind” relate to not-knowing? Jesus teaching us to become a child again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven to not-knowing?
9. Can not-knowing be a form of knowing? Explain.
10. Is there possibility for certainty even though you feel much uncertainty? Explain.
11. How do you integrate the subjective and objective in your spiritual life?
12. Do your daily prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading, as well as other daily spiritual disciplines.
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