Part 2: Learning How to Imagine the World "As If"

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Get started in the interest of time while we try to figure this out, because I do, I would love to have some time for questions. And this morning we're going to open up a little space and talk more. I was a lot of information last week, so thank you for hanging in there with me. And luckily, because we are looking at things this morning too. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Oh, wonderful. Perfect. [00:00:21] Speaker A: We have actual things to look at, too. You can stay here. [00:00:25] Speaker C: Stay here. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll use you in a second. [00:00:30] Speaker D: I'm not sure if we quite did it the way you need, Elizabeth. [00:00:33] Speaker A: That's perfect. That's exactly how I need it. That's perfect. Okay, we'll see. So, yes, thank you for being here again and to pick up where we left off from last week. And then also a moment of very brief review for people who weren't here. Or as a reminder too, I suggested [00:00:52] Speaker B: last week that we are stuck in [00:00:54] Speaker A: a crisis of imagination and we accept [00:00:57] Speaker B: the world as is. [00:00:59] Speaker A: But it's our call as Christians to imagine the world as if the kingdom of God has come on earth as it is in heaven. And we answered these three questions about imagination. What is imagination? And we're using a definition from an [00:01:14] Speaker B: educational theorist named Maxine Green. [00:01:17] Speaker A: And she says imagination is the capacity [00:01:20] Speaker B: to posit an alternative reality. [00:01:22] Speaker A: So it's not imaginary pretend like your imaginary friend. But we're using imagination as something prophetic and forward moving and something in the future, something that brings us to the future. And why is imagination necessary for faith? [00:01:37] Speaker B: Because it allows us to see the world as if the kingdom of God [00:01:40] Speaker A: has come on earth as it is in heaven. And we talked a little bit last week about the ways in which that are keeping us from imagining. We looked at this crisis of imagination like a prism from different dimensions. [00:01:53] Speaker B: We had education, ecclesiology, philosophy, neuroscience and theology. [00:01:59] Speaker A: So we'll remember that as we start because we will revisit and kind of tie up those loose ends at the end. So how do we get from as is accepting the world as is to imagining the world as if. Okay, so we're going to take a look at this piece and Andrew has some printouts if you'd like to see it in more or closer up. So I just want you to take a look at this piece and take [00:02:30] Speaker B: one minute and just notice what you see. [00:02:35] Speaker A: And I want you to think you [00:02:37] Speaker B: can make a mental list of at [00:02:39] Speaker A: least three things that you notice. [00:03:05] Speaker C: It. [00:03:31] Speaker A: Does everybody have a copy or can see? [00:03:42] Speaker B: Okay, so let's take a minute to share. [00:03:45] Speaker A: What do you notice? And I Didn't have any sort of guidelines or specifications because I just am curious to see what you notice. [00:03:54] Speaker E: Okay. [00:03:55] Speaker A: On the smaller one, I saw the [00:03:57] Speaker E: man down with the sword. So I'm seeing either death or violence. [00:04:03] Speaker A: You saw a man with a sword? Death and violence. [00:04:06] Speaker E: Death and violence. On the smaller scale. [00:04:09] Speaker D: Mm. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Francis. [00:04:13] Speaker F: I see screaming. [00:04:15] Speaker A: Both of people and animals screaming, people and animals. Like mouths open. [00:04:22] Speaker G: Mm. [00:04:27] Speaker B: You see lights up here. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Is that what you're referencing? Carol sees a window in the right corner, a light bulb. [00:04:50] Speaker G: I see alarm before the suffering starts. And also dismemberment. [00:04:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:04] Speaker F: I see a cow or a bull, [00:05:05] Speaker A: and I immediately thought of the golden calf right here. [00:05:09] Speaker H: Mm. [00:05:12] Speaker A: And there was one more. Did you want to share? [00:05:16] Speaker C: Yeah. My first impression is there's no common theme. I don't see anything that pulls it together and gives an idea of what it's supposed to be as a whole. But I do see indeed, the bull. And then the left lower corner, this monkey like creature that's reaching out. This one? [00:05:38] Speaker A: Yeah. But take one more minute and just keep looking. And I want you to see what else you notice. [00:06:10] Speaker I: Am I connected by this? Am I connected by the cord? Yeah. Okay. So if I take it out. Okay. [00:06:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:27] Speaker A: I was just going to give us some time. Yeah. So what else did you notice? Yep. [00:06:30] Speaker E: In the top right, the man with his hands out looks like he's in bondage or trying to come out of a sack. So he's screaming to get out. So to me, it seems like he is imprisoned and trying to escape with his hands out, sort of like that. He's put in, like either a burlap or some kind of sack. [00:06:54] Speaker G: In the slightly to the right of the center, there's something that doesn't match. And it looks like someone's offering a light. So that doesn't match the chaos. Mm. [00:07:09] Speaker F: Francis, the bottom part is framed by the hand on one side and the foot on the other. [00:07:17] Speaker B: Right here and then on the other side. [00:07:20] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:07:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. [00:07:21] Speaker F: And is that print in the middle? Hieroglyphics. [00:07:25] Speaker B: It looks like it's text right here. [00:07:28] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:07:28] Speaker B: And above Marks. Yeah. [00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks like marks. Yeah. The thing that I always notice when [00:07:37] Speaker B: I'm looking at this or that, when I look longer and see something sort of familiar. This woman and the child remind me [00:07:46] Speaker A: of a Pieta, like the Michelangelo Pieta of Mary holding the child. [00:07:53] Speaker B: And somebody mentioned screaming or yelling. And everybody's mouth is open except the child in the mother's arms. [00:08:04] Speaker A: So on April 27, 1937, the Guardian reported this the following, it said, Guernica, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants, was yesterday reduced to a mass of burning ruins by countless number of German planes which kept up a continuous bombing for three and a half hours. The full story of yesterday's massacre is not yet known, but what details there are are horrible enough. It is now disclosed that the rebel planes bombed and set fire to isolated farmhouses for a distance of five miles around Guernica. Even flocks of sheep were machine gunned. So you might have seen this painting before or be familiar with this historical [00:08:44] Speaker B: event, but the town in northern Spain, [00:08:46] Speaker A: Guernica had no military value. But it was attacked by Nazi, German and Italian fascists who were supporting General Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. [00:08:57] Speaker B: And this marked the first time of [00:08:59] Speaker A: an aerial bombing of a civilian population. So they didn't even send fighter planes when they bombed Guernica because they weren't expecting any resistance. They had no resistance. So the attack was just a way to test new bombing tactics in preparation for what was to come in the years across Europe. So it's interesting because Ed mentioned this idea of an alternative reality. It's not always good. Imagination and bringing a new consciousness of possibility into the world isn't always good. [00:09:30] Speaker B: So a couple of days after the bombing, the news reached Pablo Picasso, who [00:09:34] Speaker A: was living in Paris at the time. And he had been working on a mural for the Spanish Pavilion for something else at the Paris International exhibit. But when he heard about the bombing, he stopped that project and made this mural instead. And it's one of the most well known pieces of modern art of the 20th century. And it's very, very large. So a human would come up to [00:09:56] Speaker B: probably about here if you were standing [00:09:59] Speaker A: in front of it. And so some years later, Picasso was living in Paris still. And Paris was then occupied by the Nazis during World War II. And there's a story that says a German officer was in his apartment with Picasso and he saw a photo of Guernica. And the officer said to Picasso, did you do that? And Picasso turned to him and said, no, you did. And so Guernica is frequently used by Maxine Green to illustrate the singular power that art has to release the imagination. [00:10:32] Speaker B: And so that leads us to the [00:10:34] Speaker A: first step and how this happens. Art shocks us into wide awakeness. This is an awareness of what it means to be in the world. And when we look at art, there's often this defamiliarization process that prompts this awakeness. And this is similar to many theories about how we learn we Encounter, challenge, a disorienting dilemma, and then we have to choose a new path. [00:11:01] Speaker B: So a wide awakeness is the consciousness [00:11:04] Speaker A: of yourself and the place in the world. And this might seem simple and obvious, [00:11:08] Speaker B: and if it does, it means you're [00:11:10] Speaker A: probably already wide awake. Maxine Green says, without the ability to think for yourself, to reflect on your life, there's really no awareness, there's no consciousness. So consciousness doesn't come automatically. It comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious. So we have to notice what there is to notice, which is what you are doing with Guernica. So art is this disruptive force that challenges the given and the familiar. And we talked about last week how when we don't release our imagination, our lives are stuck in these cul de sacs, and our brain keeps firing and wiring the same things, we think the same thoughts. And so to be wide awake is sort of throwing a wrench in those plans. And wide awakeness will look different for each one of us because it's individual. So we have these varying states of clouds of cul de sacs that we need to be awoken from. So back to Guernica, when we are wide awake to notice what there is to be noticed. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Guernica, then just isn't a historical scene, [00:12:15] Speaker A: but it becomes a present reality. [00:12:18] Speaker B: It's not that it just happened in the past to somebody, and so we [00:12:22] Speaker A: maybe should care about it, but that it's happening now to somebody, to other people. [00:12:27] Speaker B: So April 27, 1937, is here and now, and we bring our own experiences, our own memories to this work. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Picasso said that art is the lie that tells the truth. And I really like that, because part of being wide awake is. Is seeing the truth and seeing the truth of the world, seeing the insufficiencies of the world, and then deciding which truth we want to tell. So Guernica is an imagined depiction that reveals real deficiencies in our social fabric. And that's our work, to restore and [00:13:00] Speaker B: repair these tears by imagining the world as if it could be different and [00:13:05] Speaker A: as if tragedies like this are no longer possible or permissible. And Green says that when we let our imagination be released by Guernica, in particular, we are likely in rebellion against such horror to summon up images of smiling mothers and lively and lovely children, [00:13:24] Speaker B: everything we love, metaphors for what ought to be. [00:13:29] Speaker A: So first we have to see. We have to be wide awake to what is happening in the world, our place in the world, to imagine how it could be different. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Okay, next we're going to take a [00:13:42] Speaker A: look at this work. [00:13:43] Speaker B: And we also have prints of this work to look at. [00:13:48] Speaker A: And it might be helpful to have this in front of you. Okay. [00:14:08] Speaker B: For looking at this work, we are going to be in partners. [00:14:12] Speaker A: A partner or a group of three would be fine. The bench is not part of it. But I put. I used this image so you could see the scale. Yeah. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Okay. In your partner or group of three, I want you to take a look at this work. [00:14:35] Speaker A: The bench is not. Yeah. [00:14:36] Speaker B: Just so you could see the size. And I want you to think about [00:14:40] Speaker A: these questions and finish these questions. So take a minute to look at [00:14:45] Speaker B: the work and then think. [00:14:47] Speaker A: From this list, you and your partner can choose one or two questions to finish. So I'll give you an example. [00:14:55] Speaker B: How did the artists decide to put these panels in order? How would it be different if these [00:15:06] Speaker A: were circles and not rectangles? [00:15:10] Speaker B: What if we knew the purpose of the colors? [00:15:18] Speaker A: So take a minute and you can chat with your partner and. [00:15:21] Speaker B: And choose two or three one or two questions from this list and finish [00:15:25] Speaker A: something that you're curious about that you're wondering about this work. They can be very basic too. [00:15:47] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:16:51] Speaker A: Okay. Take 30 more seconds to finish up discussing your questions. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Okay. Let's come back together and share some [00:17:25] Speaker A: of the things that you might be wondering about. So. So could I have two or three groups volunteer to share some of their questions that they were curious about? Not to answer them, but just to hear Carol. Okay. [00:17:42] Speaker H: Well, how did the artist decide on the placement? [00:17:48] Speaker A: How did the artist decide on the placement of the panels? Any other questions out of Lynn? [00:18:00] Speaker D: We were wondering what it's representing that, you know, the first thing that came to mind was skin tone and different skin tone. But what is the majority? And why is that the majority? [00:18:20] Speaker A: And Kim. [00:18:23] Speaker H: So we talked about this idea that it looks constrained by its lines. And that led us to perhaps saying why and what might change if it weren't constrained. So we spent a lot of time talking about that visual constraint box. [00:18:43] Speaker A: Linear. Everything is. Think about Guernica. When somebody shared that it was hard to tell a pattern or what was going on and a little chaotic. This is very constrained and orderly. Yep. [00:18:55] Speaker B: This is a piece called Synecdoche by a Korean American artist by the name of Byron Kim. [00:19:02] Speaker A: This is in the National Gallery of Art. Synecdoche. Synecdoche. Does anybody know what a synecdoche is? So a couple nods. A synecdoche is a figure of speech where a part represents the whole. So an example would be all Hands on deck. You want more than their hands to come. You want their whole bodies. But the synecdoche is the figure of speech, that the hands represent the body, the part represents the whole. So that's the title, unofficial title of this work. This is in the National Gallery of [00:19:41] Speaker B: Art, Princeton, actually, the university. [00:19:43] Speaker A: He did a smaller piece with students and staff here a few years ago. And he's a contemporary artist. He lives in New York City. And he plays with ideas of colors, words, and the social, political issues that we face. And so each panel represents a skin [00:20:01] Speaker B: tone, and each panel is 8 by [00:20:05] Speaker A: 10, which is the traditional size of a portrait. And the actual full name of this is Synecdoche. And then the names of the people whose skin tone this is. And there are 566 panels in this work. [00:20:20] Speaker B: Here is a picture of the artist in the hat. He would tape off somebody's forearm and then use all his paints, and you can see the different colors that he's [00:20:31] Speaker A: using to match a skin tone exactly, and then preserve that paint. And then he would take it back to his New York City studio and paint the portrait. And so he's wanting us to think about the. And challenge our ideas of categorization and putting limits on something. So can we look at a portrait of somebody and know a part of them and know their whole, or can you look at one in the whole of all of those? 566. And so we don't have time, but it would be interesting to do another set of questions that you just did, asking things about what would be different [00:21:13] Speaker B: if they were in a different order or if they were in order of age, or what would change if the sitters got to choose what their portrait looked like. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Something like that. [00:21:24] Speaker B: And so synecdoche makes us think about the parts in the whole and how [00:21:30] Speaker A: we fit into everything. And that leads us to the second [00:21:32] Speaker B: way that art moves us from as [00:21:34] Speaker A: is to as if, which is to move us to the margins of life. So we're wide awake. We're freed from these cul de sacs, [00:21:41] Speaker B: these clouds of givenness that we're stuck under. [00:21:45] Speaker A: And now where do we go? We go to the margins. And moving to the margins moves us away from the main text of life in the center to the edges. And Richard Rohr has this concept, the Franciscan priest. It's called the edge of the inside. He says that practical truth is more likely found at the bottom and the edges, rather than the top or the center of most groups, institutions, and cultures. So the center is where it's safe, where everybody looks like you, where you know everybody, you sit in the same place. But the margins, the edge of the inside, is where practical truth is found. Because when you're at the edges of anything, of any part of your identity, you can talk to other people on the other side. You can learn from them, you can learn their language, you can love them. And he says that this is often where Jesus hangs out to. Jesus isn't only an insider, but he's interested also in getting to know and love the outsiders. [00:22:41] Speaker B: And so when we move to the [00:22:43] Speaker A: margins of life, this is what makes empathy possible. And empathy is a byproduct of imagination, because we're able to see, see from somebody else's eyes and hear from their ears. There's an author that says, Cynthia Ozick, that the doctors who have no pain can imagine those who suffer. So those at the center can imagine what it is to be outside. The strong can imagine the weak. Illuminated lives can imagine the dark. Poets in their twilight can imagine the borders of stellar fire. We strangers can imagine the familiar heart of strangers. And I think when we imagine this way, the stranger becomes the neighbor. And so when we look at works like Synecdoche, I think that we realize [00:23:29] Speaker B: something that Maxine Green says that my [00:23:32] Speaker A: world is not the world we can see maybe our place in it, but we also see how vast the whole is and beautiful the whole is that God created. [00:23:42] Speaker B: So we are wide awake. [00:23:44] Speaker A: We have moved to the margins [00:23:47] Speaker B: and the third way that art cultivates imagination. [00:23:52] Speaker A: We're going to take a brief look at this piece. I wonder if anybody recognizes it. It's at the museum here in Princeton. [00:23:59] Speaker B: So this is called Another Place, and [00:24:02] Speaker A: it's by a Ghanaian artist named El Anatsui. And we have some pronouns as well. And I'll show you a detail in a minute, and I'll just. He's Ghanaian, from Ghana. [00:24:14] Speaker B: And so I'll just tell you a brief story. [00:24:16] Speaker A: And I had been familiar with this [00:24:17] Speaker B: piece when the museum was open earlier, and he has many tapestries like this. [00:24:22] Speaker A: But the first time that I visited the museum, when it opened in October, if you've been. You know that the contemporary modern wing is sort of off to the back, and you have to wind your way through the museum to get there. And I had made my way sort of to where the ancient pots are, and it seemed like that was the end and that there was just a little hallway off, and it looked like that was going to be offices or restrooms or something. [00:24:46] Speaker B: But I Turned down the corner, and [00:24:48] Speaker A: when you turn that corner, you see this piece. This is one of the first pieces you see in the contemporary wing. And it just took my breath away because to me, it looks like a sheet of diamonds hanging on the wall, [00:25:01] Speaker B: and it's shimmering and shining, and it was just beautiful. [00:25:05] Speaker A: But this is actually. Does anybody know what it's made of? Soda tops. Bottle tops. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Yep. So this is a close up. So El Anatsui had found a bag [00:25:20] Speaker A: of bottle caps on the side of the road and didn't know what to do with them. He brought them back to his studio and they sat there for two years unused. And then finally he started to weave them together. [00:25:30] Speaker B: You can sort of see he molds them and then weaves them together with [00:25:35] Speaker A: copper wire to make these beautiful tapestries. [00:25:39] Speaker B: And most of the bottle caps that [00:25:40] Speaker A: he uses are from local distilleries. And they speak to the legacy of [00:25:47] Speaker B: the economic network of the Atlantic slave [00:25:50] Speaker A: trade and the role that alcohol played in that. And so they bear the mark quite literally of centuries of these old stories, hegemonic stories that we tell ourselves. [00:25:59] Speaker B: But they see them, these objects, as [00:26:01] Speaker A: if they could be otherwise, as if [00:26:03] Speaker B: they could be something new and beautiful. [00:26:06] Speaker A: And so he doesn't erase the past, but he imagines the future as if it could be something different. [00:26:13] Speaker B: And so this is the third way [00:26:14] Speaker A: that Maxine Greene tells us that art cultivates our imagination. And this is her word. It possibilizes the world, others and ourselves. I'm going to add God, she doesn't [00:26:27] Speaker B: say that, but it possibilizes the world. [00:26:30] Speaker A: We're wide awake. We've moved to the margins, the edge of the inside, and now we can see the world full of possibility. [00:26:39] Speaker B: So I mentioned earlier that we took [00:26:41] Speaker A: last week our problem and looked at it like a prism from different dimensions. And so now we are going to possibleize imagination and see, when we refract it through the possible, what might happen through all of these things. [00:26:56] Speaker B: So last week we talked briefly about [00:26:58] Speaker A: how one of the things keeping us from imagining and faith formation. Meredith Miller offers the analogy of building brick walls. We have a piece of information, we have another one. We build just like this, like a Jenga tower, but it's not very sturdy and it doesn't always stand. And I told you the story about my niece, Austin, and how she decided she would rather believe in science than God and couldn't at the same time. [00:27:22] Speaker B: And so Miller actually suggests that instead of brick walls, we should be weaving [00:27:27] Speaker A: faith like a web, like a Spider's web. [00:27:30] Speaker B: So a spider's web is. They're all different. They're intricate and beautiful, but they all share the same characteristics of having these [00:27:39] Speaker A: internal strands, anchor strands, and then internal strands. And so these are things that we know and love about God. [00:27:48] Speaker B: These are things that we practice together, ritual worship. But importantly, when one of those strands [00:27:54] Speaker A: breaks or somebody walks into it or a stick goes through it, the whole thing typically doesn't just fall apart like a brick wall would, but the other strands actually become more resilient and have [00:28:06] Speaker B: to reweave and fill that space. [00:28:09] Speaker A: And I think this is the work of imagination and feel, faith formation. And when we can cultivate that muscle [00:28:15] Speaker B: of imagining, that's when we cultivate faith. [00:28:19] Speaker A: That's like a spider's web. That's flexible, resilient. [00:28:24] Speaker B: And when we face a challenge or we face something, we don't need God to stay completely as is. But when we can reweave our web, [00:28:34] Speaker A: we can imagine God as if and learn new things about God. And our faith becomes more resilient and more intricate and, I think, more beautiful. We also talked about John Calvin and how what he had to say about art really had a severe and lasting [00:28:50] Speaker B: effect on the relationship between the church and visual art. And I mentioned that [00:28:59] Speaker A: his legacy from what he said might have been a little bit misguided. And I shared the statistic that religious art from the 13th century to the 17th century almost was cut in half. The subject matter. [00:29:12] Speaker B: But Calvin also has something to say [00:29:14] Speaker A: about secular resources for gaining knowledge about God. God bestows on us a variety of gifts, and the appropriate response is gratitude, and these gifts are for our benefit. So he doesn't completely dismiss art. He says, if the Lord has willed that we be helped in physics, dialectic, mathematics, and other disciplines, and by the work and ministry of the ungodly, then let us use this assistance. But the key is what the end is. So art is not the end. God is always the end. And if art can help us learn about God, then we should use that gift to our benefit. Like I said, the key is to be careful to what end we are using art. And I'll remind you of what he says the chief end of humanity is in the Geneva Catechism is that we should know God, by whom we were created. That is the end of humanity. And so I think it's wonderful that we can use things like art to get to know God. What would Calvin think of the idea of gaining divine revelation by looking at thousands of bottle caps hanging on a wall? God only knows, but that's also the point. Our knowledge of God is ever grasping and never complete. But we are given the gift of art through God and by God to help us illuminate the way. [00:30:34] Speaker B: I'm not sure what he would think [00:30:35] Speaker A: of that either, but I think I like him. Green says that works of arguments come to conclusions, but works of art do not, thanks be to God, that there is no end to the theological imagination that art can cultivate for us. [00:30:51] Speaker B: We talked a little bit about I [00:30:53] Speaker A: think therefore I am and the way that that has kept us from imagining and putting reason above everything else. The philosopher James K. Smith has an alternative, and I'll just briefly share. He's a contemporary philosopher and theologian who went to school to study philosophy. He says nothing beats the love of wisdom out of you like a graduate program in philosophy. And so he had put all of his eggs in the saving power of reason. But he. He faced severe mental health issues and depression and couldn't figure out why. He had a wife and kids and jobs and everything on paper, every, all of the external circumstances, he should be happy. But he said, why am I sobbing then in the middle of the afternoon? It doesn't make any sense. So reason had failed him. He devoted his personal and working life to the authority of reason. And it wasn't working. And he says I didn't need to refine my knowledge or I think, make that brick wall stronger. He said I needed to carry a different story in my bones. He didn't need to know more. He needed to understand otherwise. And I think that's what we've been trying to do with art this whole time. And so I think, therefore I am becomes I imagine therefore I am. We can't think our way out of this mess. He says we must get out of our heads and try something else. We must move beyond what we know and imagine what could be. There is a time and place for [00:32:22] Speaker B: reason, of course, but I think that when we put it above everything else, [00:32:28] Speaker A: just like we are educated to do, we get stuck in those cul de sacs and we form knowledge in the same way. [00:32:35] Speaker B: And so I think it's time to [00:32:38] Speaker A: make a shift to putting imagination at the forefront. [00:32:43] Speaker B: Very briefly, we talked last week about [00:32:45] Speaker A: how our brains like to fire and [00:32:47] Speaker B: wire together and how we get caught in these loops and our neurons keep us trapped in these algorithms that feed [00:32:56] Speaker A: us the same information. And one thing I think is really cool about art that I'm learning more about is something called neuro aesthetics. And that is what happens in and to our brains when we look at art. And it turns out just like forming connections, our brains generally are pretty lazy. They want to save as much energy as possible. And this is a good thing. This is how we survived in the first place. It's because of evolution. And so we run on a reward [00:33:23] Speaker B: system and we want to save energy [00:33:25] Speaker A: for things like finding food and breathing and sleeping and all of those things. [00:33:31] Speaker B: And so one way that our brain [00:33:33] Speaker A: does this is that it likes to predict what it's going to see. It's got visual efficiency. Our vision takes up 5% of energy of our working energy. So think about the thousands of things your body is doing right now. 5% of that whole energy is just going to processing what you're seeing. So to get ahead of that, our brain runs through a file of what it's seeing and wants to predict that. So, so then when it matches it, it doesn't have to process it. It saved energy and it's rewarded. But when we see art, particularly modern or contemporary art, something we haven't seen before, we get a coding error, There's a glitch in our brain. And our brain literally has to rearrange the data in our head and it [00:34:18] Speaker B: has to file through what it knows, [00:34:21] Speaker A: recognize that it hasn't seen this before and it has to imagine. And so I think it's so fascinating. And there's a whole. Neuro aesthetics is sort of a new field. There's a center for neuro aesthetics at the University of Pennsylvania. And those scientists actually say that museums create the perfect conditions to expect the unexpected. [00:34:41] Speaker B: And art not only gives us these [00:34:43] Speaker A: opportunities for imagination to be cultivated, but to flourish. And they say this, they say, quote, the playful and safe as if context of art, where guards can be lowered and our actions suspended, allows for the usually negative prediction errors to be enjoyed. So I wonder if museums can provide this playful and safe as if this environment to expect the unexpected. Why not churches? And then finally we get to the [00:35:12] Speaker B: theological and Carl Barth taught us about [00:35:15] Speaker A: the powers, the lordless powers and the [00:35:18] Speaker B: forces that keep us true, trapped in sin. [00:35:20] Speaker A: And I hope you can kind of see the resonances of that as we've been talking through these points. [00:35:25] Speaker B: And he says the anecdote to these [00:35:28] Speaker A: lordless powers is prayer and specifically praying thy kingdom come, the second petition of the Lord's Prayer. And when we pray this, it's defiant, it's prophetic, and it calls for us to dismantle whatever is against the kingdom, against what is as is, and to Imagine as if. [00:35:46] Speaker B: And there are two things that I [00:35:48] Speaker A: want to point out about what he says. Remember that our first step to cultivating imagination through art is to being shocked into wide awakeness. And then Barthes says that when we pray thy kingdom come, it awakens us and keeps us awake to know this kingdom, even in the midst of kingdom disorder, to look toward it and call for it. So remember, Maxine Green is not a theologian. She's not saying this, but I think when we are able to be wide awake and imagine, we can do what Barth is calling us to do and actually see the kingdom and stay awake. And the kingdom is sort of unconcealed and we can finally see it. And then, also, not so coincidentally, Barthes describes the kingdom of God as being on the margin. In the same way that Green positions art on the margin. He says the kingdom is a great new thing on the margin. It's yet outside and not inside the margin or the horizon of all perceptions and conceptions of. [00:36:43] Speaker D: Of people. [00:36:44] Speaker A: We, a people of disorder who have fallen wholly and utterly under the lordship of the lordless powers. So imagination gives us the capacity to pray, to resist, and to live into the kingdom. And it might not be that hard because Barthes also says whether people notice it or not, the kingdom has come right up to them. So it is all around us. [00:37:06] Speaker B: So we can see. Here are some of the pieces that [00:37:08] Speaker A: we took a look at how art releases the imagination that is so essential to the life of faith. [00:37:14] Speaker B: And a couple of things to notice [00:37:15] Speaker A: is that I wish we had more [00:37:17] Speaker B: time, but we took our time in [00:37:19] Speaker A: looking at these pieces. So it wasn't just like a glance, [00:37:24] Speaker B: a leisurely stroll through a gallery, but [00:37:27] Speaker A: we were intentional about it, asked questions, [00:37:29] Speaker B: wondered, noticed what there is to be noticed. And then another thing to note is [00:37:35] Speaker A: that none of these works are religious. This certainly could be done with a whole slew of religious works. And that's another adult ed series for another time. [00:37:43] Speaker B: But just like Bart said, the kingdom [00:37:45] Speaker A: is all around us. And so when we take the time [00:37:48] Speaker B: with pieces of art to notice what [00:37:51] Speaker A: there is to be noticed, to let God come to the surface and show [00:37:55] Speaker B: us what there is to learn what we need to know about God, our [00:37:58] Speaker A: imagination is cultivated and we can imagine the world as if we have two minutes for questions, if anybody, or comment. I'm just glad that we. Yeah, we have a couple of minutes [00:38:14] Speaker B: and this is just scratching the surface. [00:38:16] Speaker A: We didn't say anything about scripture and imagination, Holy Spirit and imagination. How I think the incarnation and Resurrection of Christ is imagination. So there's lots to say about imagination. This is just the start of it. [00:38:30] Speaker H: So I'm going to speak for Elizabeth. She said a minute ago she wished she had more time and she does. So if you've loved doing this, she's going to do a small group this fall over at the museum, so watch for that. I forget what day you're doing that. [00:38:47] Speaker A: Tuesday, Tuesday afternoons? [00:38:49] Speaker H: Tuesday afternoons. So there will be sign ups. So if you love this and want to dig deep, deeper, there's going to be a wonderful opportunity. [00:38:56] Speaker I: Thanks, Kim. [00:39:05] Speaker J: So a number of years ago I went to an old cathedral in Neuvrecht which was hit by Calvinism a few centuries ago. And the first thing I noticed was that all the artwork that had been in there was gone. So most of the building was just an old stone building where you could see where artwork had been. But it had all been destroyed by the iconoclasts. But in one corner there was an unbelievably beautiful piece of artwork that had been donated by someone much more recently. It was very abstract but incredibly beautiful. And I think to me it represented that maybe Calvinism was right in the sense that we had tried to conceptualize God too realistically in a way that was constraining. And this abstract piece of art actually, which was, I mean, it was sort of a broken tree. And another thing that I don't remember exactly, but it was incredibly beautifully put together. But you couldn't conceptualize it in a human way and yet had incredible beauty to it. So maybe out of the destruction of Calvinism something beautiful can come. [00:40:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it is remarkable too. Well, one of the things that has been running in my head and maybe it's a little bit of an elephant in the room as I've been arguing that churches don't use art in a lecture about using art. In a church that uses art with the art of faithfulness. The fact that I'm here talking. So NASA is a little bit of an exception to the rule, but it's certainly not the norm. [00:40:53] Speaker K: So friends, I hate to be the bad guy, but we do need to conclude our time. Luckily, Elizabeth is here every Sunday in addition to the small group and invite you guys to stay for Pastor Wendy's reception. Can you join me in giving her just a big thank you to today's presentation?