{"id":27168,"date":"2021-02-01T05:32:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T13:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=27168"},"modified":"2021-02-01T05:32:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T13:32:17","slug":"imagine-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/imagine-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagine"},"content":{"rendered":"

…as imagination bodies forth, The forms of things unknown, the poet\u2019s pen, Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, vi.14-17<\/p>\n

Effective leaders stoke the imagination. Anytime we move beyond, in our mind\u2019s eye, where we are now, that\u2019s imaginative. The imagination should never be reduced to early childhood but should be evoked for modern-day leadership. For C. S. Lewis, the imagination was the organ of meaning. For much of his life, his intuition and imagination were held distinct and separated. These divided hemispheres rushed together when he met the One who could capture the furthest reaches of both his intuition and <\/i>imagination.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frederick Douglass was another man and leader who discovered the potency of a vivid imagination. A biographer writes, \u201cWhat the cruelty of slavery had stolen from him, he seized back in his empowering imagination\u201d (Blight, 11). Steeped in the atmosphere of Negro spirituals and the story of Exodus, Douglass\u2019s mind and imagination for what \u201ccould be\u201d were forming. He recollects memories of social and musical communion where \u201cwild songs, revealed at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness\u201d (31). The rhythms, moans, and improvised lyrics both mystified and formed a young Douglass. Upon further reflection, while these slaves owned very little if anything at all, they “owned the sounds and rhythms, the melodies and lyrics\u201d (32). Hearing these songs, Douglass suggested, would do more for the cause of abolition than reading whole volumes of anti-slavery philosophy.<\/p>\n

February providentially marks the scheduled reading of Exodus in my year-long reading plan. This quintessential Hebrew narrative filled with oppression, genocide, nationalism, murder, infanticide, deceit, plagues, and idolatry also shines with deliverance, empowerment, rescue, justice, miracles, restoration, and worship. Few passages stoke my imagination more than Exodus\u2019s key text, Exodus 3:7-8 \u201cThe Lord said, \u2018I have indeed seen <\/b>the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard<\/b> them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned<\/b> about their suffering. So I have come down<\/b> to rescue them from the hadn\u2019t of the Egyptians and to bring <\/b>them up out of that land into a good and spacious land\u2026\u201d I\u2019ve emphasized the verbs ascribed to I Am: Seen. Heard. Concerned. Come down. Bring up. They pique interest, catalyze the imagination, and provide a pattern for leadership that involves incarnation (seeing and hearing), empathy and solidarity (a bowel-turning concern), and action (come alongside and bring up). I have to believe this story helped provide the second pillar for Douglass as he \u201ccultivated a furtive, lyrical imagination rooted in his discovery of language\u201d (50).<\/p>\n

In times of liminality, leaders feed their own imagination and capture the imagination of others.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Library of America<\/p>\n

David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom <\/i>(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…as imagination bodies forth, The forms of things unknown, the poet\u2019s pen, Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.\u201d Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, vi.14-17 Effective leaders stoke the imagination. Anytime we move beyond, in our mind\u2019s eye, where we are now, that\u2019s imaginative. The imagination should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1948,1768],"class_list":["post-27168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-douglass","tag-imagination","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27170,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27168\/revisions\/27170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}