The Water We Imagine
Main character Rina in Ken Liu’s short story, State Change, maintains multiple freezers in her small apartment, not because she is stockpiling food but rather because she lives in a world where we are each born with unique objects in which our souls are literally held. In this world, the somber English poet T.S. Eliot’s soul was a tin of coffee, Joan of Arc’s soul was a beech branch, and the great orator Cicero was born with pebble for a soul, which he put in his mouth to learn to enunciate and project past it.
Rina’s soul, the reader slowly learns, is a cube of ice. Since everyone must stay close to their soul object to remain alive in this world, Rina spends her life avoiding sunny beaches, amassing coolers for when she must travel, and hustling from one freezer to the next. Her demeanor too is closed, rigid, and icy. At her work, place where a freezer hums under her desk, other office workers barely notice her, or, if they do, they usually hustle to leave her presence as quickly as possible.
Rina believes this to be her sad fate: to live a life of reserve and protection lest she lose her few precious soul drops to the horrors of melting. But the strangest thing happens that causes her to change the way she understands the way the story of her life is to be written. Reading this piece of fiction helped me to wonder anew about the stories we tell about our own lives and the communities of which we are a part.
Whether we know it or not, stories are everywhere. Whether those stories include the family legends of triumph or trial we pass down, the stories sold to us by marketing companies, the stories shared in church and in the Bible, or the stories we consume in our politics, current events, sports, history, movies, TV, YouTube, Twitter, or TikTok, stories shape our thoughts. And those thoughts shape our actions.
In his book, Tales of the End, biblical scholar David Barr invites us to read the book of Revelation as a story about Jesus.1 Barr reminds readers that the Bible is full of different genres of books. There are myths, parables, biography, poetry, genealogy, and law books. There are also four books in the Bible we call Gospels, which are books about the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Gospel is also a word that means, very simply, good news. While Revelation is not a Gospel in the same sense of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it is gospel as in good news. But it is good news portrayed in a strange story full of vision and symbol. To put it in terms of stories with which we may be more familiar, it is more Marvel superhero movie than it is straightforward documentary.
(1 David Barr. Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation, second edition. (Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 2012).
Revelation, is a story filled with symbols and visions of angels, dragons, sword-clad horse riders, rivers of blood, and women in childbirth. It may not be real and true to us in the sense that these are scenes we too may expect to see when we open our front doors, but it very much can be real and true to us in the sense that highly symbolized and imaginative stories can tell us deep truths and awaken in us deep and holy healing.
In Ken Liu’s short story collection, The Paper Menagerie, there is another short story titled The Chinese God of War. In it, the fictional character Lao Guan finds himself and his compatriots in a historically accurate situation from the late 1800s. After surviving the perilous voyage from China to the US to seek their fortunes, the men find they have been swindled into inescapable, brutally violent, indentured servitude, chiseling out mountains for ravenous railroad barons. Gripping the grim reality of their plight, Lao Guan seeks to convince a number of the other men to flee their encampment and start over in another Western state, perhaps forming their own gold mining crew. But no one wants to leave. What if it's worse out there? What if they catch us and make us an example? What about the dishonor of not repaying this debt they claim we owe?
So, Lao Guan calls upon the stories they all hold dear. He reminds them of Jie You, the Han Princess whose name meant ‘Dissolver of Sorrows” and who made peace by making her way in a foreign land. He reminds them of Lord Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War, who teaches that the gods smile upon those who take fate into their own hands. And he tells them their own story of surviving an ocean together with little more than stories and laughter to keep them going.
“I don’t know what will happen to us out there,” Lao Guan tells them finally. “All life is an experiment. But at the end of our lives we’d know that no man could do with our lives as he pleased except ourselves, and our triumphs and mistakes alike were our own.”2 These stories and sentiments strengthen the men’s resolve and give them the courage to build a new life in a new land together. This is the power of story. This is the power of collective imagination.
(2 Ken Liu. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. (New York: Saga Press, 2016), 334.)
John of Patmos gives his audience three highly imaginative stories, all of which David Barr invites us to understand as essentially three ways of telling the same story: the triumph of Jesus over the powers of evil. All of these stories are laden with symbols and symbolic numbers that speak in shorthand to an ancient audience the way that different logos, slogans, road signs, and certain art pieces might speak to us now.
This Revelation, perhaps refined over a lifetime of spiritual experience and passed down orally for decades before being written down is meant to stir the imagination of its audience. It’s meant to bolster their confidence and resolve to continue doing this new, strange thing of building communities of Jesus followers who care for each other and the neighbors around them despite the struggles and sorrows they may face.
In the passage we read today, we are told of a tree of life, with twelve kinds of fruit. For John, twelve was a number to represent God’s people. As we read on, we find there is always a fruit in season on this tree and that “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.”
Sometimes, American Christians are tempted to think of our spiritual life as something we only do alone. The Church of the Brethren, though, has a penchant for remembering that the spiritual life flourishes in healthy, imaginative community. As groups of people, we have more stories to tell. As groups of people, we can spark each other’s imaginations. As groups of people, we can provide mutual benefit and care. As groups of people, we can remember to whom we belong. As a community, we can remember who Jesus is and how holy love as known in Christ triumphs over the powers of violence and evil. As a community, we can remember who we are called to be, and how together, with the help of God, we can indeed bear fruit to bring healing to the nations.
Our way of being church together has been stretched and strained in this global pandemic, and it's not over yet. When we more fully emerge from this time how we are church together will be different. We may understand ourselves differently. We may understand God differently. We may understand church differently. And yet, we will still have the story of Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who makes all things new, and who cannot be stopped even by violent death.
We will still have this true and powerful story to stir our imaginations. And I believe in the power of imagination to write new stories and to bring healing. For our spiritual ancestors imagined a new church with a renewed sense of baptism, community, and familiarity with the Bible in their own language. Our spiritual ancestors imagined a program to bring livestock to wartorn countries that went on to feed families across the globe. Our spiritual ancestors imagined a volunteer program that would give people young and old a chance to share their gifts, learn more about their faith, and explore their world. Our spiritual ancestors imagined a Soup Kettle program that has fed hungry neighbors in Elgin, IL every night of the week, every week of the year for more than 30 years.
With God’s help, what might we imagine together yet? Solar panels on the roof of the sanctuary? A playground surrounded by native grasses? A worship or fellowship time where both English and Spanish can be heard being spoken? A center for peace and justice on the first floor of our building? A return to potlucks and protests and parades in which we laugh and sing and make the world around us more alive, just, and joy-filled?
What story would you like to tell? We need everyone’s gifts large and small to make this church as healthy and as faithful as it can be. Gifts do come in the form of money. And they also come in the form of time, energy, love, and imagination. When we share all those precious gifts together in co-creation with the God who triumphs over evil, who can tell what this church might yet do?
Yes, we may be dried up now. Yes, the pandemic still weighs heavy upon us. Yes, the future is in many ways uncertain. Yes, this is a time for rest and for not doing as much as possible. But the day is surely coming and is even trickling in now when we will know the rich water of life, possibility, and imagination flowing among us.
Revelation reminds us, as it reminded its original hearers, that we serve a God who overcomes all suffering, sin, and even death, who makes all things new, and whose renewing water of life we share with each other in life-changing ways, when we gather to share the truest story ever told.
At the end of that Ken Liu State Change short story, Rina finds a love worth risking her precious icy soul. She is tired of keeping herself locked up in a frigid existence. Even if these are the last moments of her life, she wagers it will all be worth it to feel some warmth. When she realizes so much time has passed that her little ice cube soul must surely be melted by now and yet she still, miraculously, breathes, she examines the glass in which she has kept her cube and it dawns upon her that all her life, she could have chosen to flow like water.
How will we gather around the flowing river of God’s living water, renew our imaginations, and learn to float on the holy possibilities? In the words of Revelation, “Come. And let everyone who hears say, come. And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”
May it be so. Amen.
