the Fourth Monday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Strange Imaginations: Peace
This poem is from a broader work by Matthew Church called, Strange Imaginations: Advent Poetics 2021.
You can download the booklet HERE; it is meant for sharing. Republished here with permission.
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We live in a world that can easily consume us with its catastrophes, commercials and cacophonies. These come at us from our larger world, or our smaller worlds; there is noise from every side vying for our attention, trying to prop up some image of what an ideal world or life should be. Here, we are often confronted by limited imaginations that fail to lift us up to see a truer horizon-line of the expansive potential in the universe, namely that it is filled with the presence of the triune God of Love. This reality gives us the ability and audacity to entertain strange imaginations - things not yet seen, or fully seen. In this we let our minds and hearts be filled with the very thoughts, hearts and imaginations that have been stirring in Creator from before the very beginning of all things. We are invited to behold these strange imaginations, letting them confront our small worlds with the grandeur of their scope and vision, alongside their earthy invitation for activist embodiment.
In a world with despair, catastrophic desecration of earth and life, it is strange to imagine hope.
In a world with discord, strife and conflict, it is strange to imagine peace.
In a world with sorrow, tragic loss, and endless human rights abuses, it is strange to imagine joy.
In a world with apathetic consumerism, neo-colonial politics, and race riots, it is strange to imagine love.
In a world with tribal gods, militant religious action, and secular elimination of Spirit, it is strange to imagine, God with us.
It may be strange to imagine, to push and prod at the edges of our own universes, but there are mysteriously expanding energies here, everything being made new. And invitations come to us from the spark and sparkle in Creator’s eyes, rousing us, astounding us, that we somehow could be caught up in these imaginations, enough to be part and parcel of their coming, enlivening this newness into the grit and grime of the everyday.
Shalom is a soiled way
It does not hover
detached from harsh realities
Though bullied by evil
It presses back in resistance,
breaks through rock
and hardened hearts
It stills the madness
of a world hurtling
towards cliff’s edge,
standing as signpost
to solid ground
It meets between
enemy lines,
beating in time
with the hearts
of all humanity,
seeking to inspire
strange imaginations
that all
could be
made well
again.
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