IMAGINATION & GOD
In the desert, we meet God. In parched times, in fire and flood, we discover who we are… Do you want to go to that other place... Where the streets have no name? You can call it “soul” or “imagination,” the place where you glimpse God, your potential... November 3, 2005 ー Interview with Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone)
Why do we need art? Why do we the lyric poetry of the Psalms? Why do we need it? Because the only way we can approach God, is (if we’re honest) through metaphor, through symbol. So art becomes essential. Not decorative. April 26, 2016 – Short film “Bono and Eugene Peterson – The Psalms” (Fuller Studio)
Anyway, for all of this: imagination. To tell our stories, to play them out, to paint pictures, moving and still, but above all to glimpse another way of being. Because as much as we need to describe the kind of world we want to live in, we need to dream up the kind of world we want to live in. In the case of a rock & roll band that is to dream out loud, at high volume, to turn it up to eleven. Because we have fallen asleep in the comfort of our freedom. 1996 ー U2 At The End Of The World ー Bill Flanagan
The inability to put ourselves in another's shoes is the core of intolerance. In his novel The Book of Evidence, Irish author John Banville's narrator and murderer confesses to the unforgivable crime of having failed to imagine what it was like to be his victim. 'I could kill her,' he says, 'because for me she was not alive.' If we want to challenge hatred, emphatic imagination is central. 1996 ー U2 At The End Of The World ー Bill Flanagan
Why do we need art? Why do we the lyric poetry of the Psalms? Why do we need it? Because the only way we can approach God, is (if we’re honest) through metaphor, through symbol. So art becomes essential. Not decorative. April 26, 2016 – Short film “Bono and Eugene Peterson – The Psalms” (Fuller Studio)
Anyway, for all of this: imagination. To tell our stories, to play them out, to paint pictures, moving and still, but above all to glimpse another way of being. Because as much as we need to describe the kind of world we want to live in, we need to dream up the kind of world we want to live in. In the case of a rock & roll band that is to dream out loud, at high volume, to turn it up to eleven. Because we have fallen asleep in the comfort of our freedom. 1996 ー U2 At The End Of The World ー Bill Flanagan
The inability to put ourselves in another's shoes is the core of intolerance. In his novel The Book of Evidence, Irish author John Banville's narrator and murderer confesses to the unforgivable crime of having failed to imagine what it was like to be his victim. 'I could kill her,' he says, 'because for me she was not alive.' If we want to challenge hatred, emphatic imagination is central. 1996 ー U2 At The End Of The World ー Bill Flanagan