That for which we long for as much as anything—connection—is the very thing that terrifies us like nothing else. We desperately long to be loved, until Love shows up on our doorstep and undoes us. And so, we become more comfortable talking about Love than talking with Love. We are more comfortable talking about those things that trouble us (including ourselves), than speaking with those by whom we can be more deeply known and provide the same experience for them—and come to know the joy that accompanies revelation, regeneration and recommissioning.

To talk about is to remain in the abstract world of the imagination. To be with is to be incarnate in the presence of others in all of our collective fullness. But once we fully inhabit our relationships with others—once we practice becoming fully incarnate—that very incarnation circles back around to renew and expand our imaginations once again, such that we are then invited by God to become even more fully incarnate. And so we travel, further up and further into the Kingdom of God.
 

Connections: Imagination to Incarnation is intended to draw us out of our straitjacketed imaginations and into an increasingly incarnate presence with others, just as God has done over the arc of the biblical narrative. We want the participants of the Conference to experience what it means to begin to move more fully into a posture of incarnation, such that their imaginations may become that much more dynamically alive to the work that God is doing in and around them in ways and places that before they could not have seen.   

- Curt Thompson, MD

 

Join us in person or on-line, Thursday and Friday, October 24th and 25th, 2024, as we take a closer look at the theme of Imagination to Incarnation.  ALL TICKETS come with access to recordings of the event.  The in-person event will be held at Fairfax Church, 11451 Braddock Road, Fairfax, Virginia.