By Alexander Carpenter — The American artist Janine Antoni returns to her childhood home to create a work of performance art. Each day, to prepare, she practices walking on a tightrope. After about a week, she starts to get her balance. Actually, she says that it wasn’t that she was getting more balanced, but that she was getting more comfortable with being out of balance. She embraces the tension. Antoni says she wishes she could do that in her life. When she’s ready to perform her work, the artist strings a rope outside just a few inches above the horizon line that she grew up looking at where sky meets land. As she walks across, the rope dips, and for a second, she touches the horizon.
That’s imagination. The visual artist creates a fresh perspective by altering our usual patterns of seeing and thereby offers viewers a new understanding. That line between sky and land, we are reminded, is an illusion. Not a border—it’s boundless space.
I have a confession to make. I have never believed in balance. Growing up in Sabbath School and church, I didn’t like how a debate over something like faith and works would usually end with someone saying, “Well, you just need to be balanced.” I never understood what that meant as a practical matter. It seemed more like a platitude than a helpful step in the Christian life. Being balanced appears to be too perfect a picture of someone on Facebook or Instagram. It’s beautiful, but it’s just a half-second frozen moment on the teeter-totter of life. Hidden are the mundane minutes and days of drudgery. I have really never felt balanced. I careen through my self-care. I see no balance in our world. Now as I sit down to write about imagination, our current reality—smoke in the skies, storms on the land, illness everywhere—makes imagining a better future feel like a Sisyphean errand. Our world is out of balance. Tensions rise—just like the global temperature. Where’s the progress for today’s pilgrim?
Is there hope beyond the horizon? Tension exists in all the cares of this world. Churches, schools, jobs, family, governments—these institutions frame our existence, giving meaning to our lives, but also creating a lot of anxiety. Institutions represent profound connection and oppressive power. Our churches, schools, jobs, family and government are the machines that make our world work, but too often they are less than heavenly. Sometimes they seem to offer nothing beyond the borders of this world.
The artist invites us to re-imagine our realities in fresh ways, to find a new perspective. So does the Apostle Paul. He writes in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Sometimes people condemn culture as worldly, but the concept of the world is actually much more profound than that. The world is any structure of meaning that we humans inhabit. Without a miracle, our bodies cannot escape the world and institutions will always define us in some way, but when we imagine, our minds float free. As Paul writes, we avoid conforming to the world by mind renewal, by gaining a new perspective, thinking beyond the usual boundaries. To renew a mind, to adjust a viewpoint, requires imagination. One cannot see beyond the superficial by just reflecting common sense or conforming to a worldly institution. Our minds connect us to God and any institution that tries to shut down its power, must be transformed. I am part of many institutions that create more tension than balance. I am an Adventist and I have made a commitment that I will always be defined, in part, by its borders.
I imagine a future Adventism focused less on conforming and more on transforming. Not just converting, but changing ways of thinking, living, and making a living, learning, defining families, and reforming the way we use institutional power itself. The faithful exist in institutions but have higher values than mere institutional preservation. This is not a matter of balance; it’s intentional community building.
So was my Adventist identity. It’s rooted in Colorado, in part defined by a story my dear grandma, born in 1927, tells about her own grandma and mother.
“My mother, Irene, was born in 1898. Around 1901, when she was a baby in Aspen, Colorado, grandma attended an Adventist tent evangelistic meeting and accepted the teachings. Around this time, Mama contracted polio and the doctors in Aspen told Grandma that Irene would never walk again. But Grandma never gave up hope that her baby would be able to walk once again. She believed firmly in the power of prayer and so began earnestly praying and giving Mama hot and cold treatments and massaging her leg for hours each day. Later that summer, a camp meeting was being held in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, so Grandma took Irene and the ministers anointed Irene and prayed for her. They returned to Aspen and a few days later, Irene was able to get up and walk. The doctor in Aspen was astonished and had no explanation other than that a miracle had occurred. Mama’s right leg was always about an inch and a half shorter than the left leg and the right foot was deformed so she needed a shoe a size and a half smaller for that foot. She walked with a limp all her life but led an active farm life and was able to get around very well. This experience greatly strengthened Grandma and Mama’s faith, and both remained devout Adventists all their lives. These two women were the major religious figures in my life. We always had Bible study at home on Sabbath afternoon. In fact, I really learned to read from the Bible and developed a love for reading early. Mama always subscribed to the Little Friend and then in my teen years to the Youth’s Instructor. I did not make a personal commitment to the church until I was in nurse’s training when I attended a series of meetings and filled out a card indicating my desire to be baptized. But the card apparently fell through the cracks and no one contacted me, and I was too shy to call anyone. Mama encouraged me to be baptized and about a year after I got married, while I was teaching school in Proctor, Colorado, I was baptized at the nearby Sterling Seventh-day Adventist Church.”
As she shares this story, my grandma, now an active 94, is quick to also note that there is no proof for this miracle. And yet, it’s clear this generational narrative of spiritual meaning, like a faithful green cord, runs forward and back through the fabric of her faith. There is a powerful thread in this family story for her, of barely post-pioneer women who took care of each other—grandmother, mother, daughter (my grandmother) who have sewn together a familiar meaning beyond their time in this world.
I’ve heard miracle stories all my life, always verified by nameless physicians who cannot believe their eyes. But I see the reality of this narrative, not just because I love my grandmother. It’s a tightrope I walk leading past my home and family and every other institution that provides meaning for my life, including Adventism. The artist, and the apostle Paul, and this story of the faithful women in my family spark my imagination. Can we see beyond what we usually call reality? What comes when we embrace being out of balance?
Will there exist a future Adventism defined more by transforming than conforming? I do know that when I take a tension-filled step along that narrative cord of faith offered by my grandmother, I touch the horizon for a moment.
Emily Dickenson writes:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
Beyond the illusive borders that separate us, our imaginations give us hope—fletched and eternal—intentionally renewing our realities: personal, institutional, and always spiritual.
–Alexander Carpenter is the executive director/executive editor elect of SPECTRUM. Email him at [email protected]