More on: imagination

Our society is grappling with a soul-sickness that is ultimately an infection of our imagination. An election may address symptoms, but how do we treat the underlying disease? How to heal the imagination? Perhaps this is what the arts are for.

Q WOULD YOU MIND if I asked you some questions about the current political situation, given the upcoming presidential election and turmoil in Europe? A. I do mind, as a matter of fact. I have nothing to say about such matters. They’re far too complex. Not to mention depressing. And crazy-making. Besides, I left politics behind…

A FEW months ago I received a letter which praised Image for “adding to the stock of available reality.” As I read that phrase, I felt a strange elation—not because it was intended as praise, but because it distilled a great deal of wisdom into very few words. Since the words were set off in…

Walter Brueggemann is professor emeritus of Old Testament studies at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, where he taught from 1986 to 2003. He has authored hundreds of articles and over sixty books, including Genesis (Westminster John Knox, 1982), The Message of the Psalms (Fortress, 1984), Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile (Fortress, 1986), Hope…

I’ve always felt I’m someone who could approach her own beheading with unvarnished resignation, no sprees of weeping or remorse; dressed, if I were lucky, in a murky red gown newly made by a servant who would miss me; if not, in a muslin shift worn fine and bleached by countless afternoons drying on mothy…

In the dark I inflate balloons ———————————for my children it’s nighttime in the house ——————————-I lose my breath, they grow their aerial games, ———————-the threads on which they become acrobats their water shins luminescent hair ———————-their laughter issues forth or holds off, paper decorations on the walls, and the colors, loose folds on their wrists,…

BECAUSE IT WAS a Monday, the day their father, Pastor Eino Hililla, spent eight and sometimes twelve hours preparing the Sunday morning sermon, Lowell led his younger brother Jonas through the parsonage yard, past the cemetery. Past the dark walnut trees, through a thicket of manzanita, down to the dark tongues of water where they…

We say flight of the imagination, but stand ankle-deep in silt. We say deep life of the mind, but seal the stone to keep the tomb untouched, O Stillness. Nearly all we find to say we speak for the most part unawares, what little bit we think to say unmoved, O Great Enormity Unmoved. Brief…