Hello,
I’m Andy Maitland, a spiritual director, a fellow journeyer in the Christian faith, trained in 2002/3/6 with Dr. Larry Crabb in the US and a practicing artist in the UK, working with companies such as Apple, the London Symphony Orchestra and the VA.
What is the Ministry of Imagination?
How to meet your Maker without dying is a playful synopsis of the Ministry of Imagination. A more serious question is, how to meet our Maker often, in this life, (in and out of turbulent times) with well-informed imagination, as individuals, communities and as nations?
"Imagination, properly understood as the name of a basic human ability, one of the things that people do in the course of living in, acting on, and thinking about the world, identifies that specific point where, according to Christian belief and experience, the Word of God becomes effective in human lives. More formally: imagination is the anthropological point of contact for divine revelation. It is not the "foundation," the "ground," the "preunderstanding," or the "ontological basis" for revelation; it is simply the place where it happens, better, the way in which it happens."
- Garret Green, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination, 1998.
As an artist I’m perpetually interested in a well-informed imagination and in my latest work, a publication of abstraction iPad drawings, I’m learning to imagine meaningfully. At its most elemental, art is relational.
As a spiritual director a well-informed imagination, a prophetic imagination (looking ahead), becomes very much a part of a conversation as the Spirit of God forms people. You can read about my spiritual direction training with Dr. Larry Crabb here.
I was recently asked “what is your spiritual direction practice?” That’s a good question as there are a number of different practices and their aims are varied too.
Continues...