Principles of Imladris
It’s no mean feat to collate and articulate the kinds of things that happen in deep prayer. As Christ says, following the spirit is an inherently unpredictable thing, like following the wind.
Nevertheless, that is the call and that is a joy to live in it.
To this point we’ve come to believe that The Papa has given us a mere handful of guiding principles and we endeavor to build upon them without ever stifling them. Their power is in their broad scope and openness to interpretation. The impulse to contain and constrain, to define and direct, seems like it would do violence to the gentle and open spirit we want to cultivate through Imladris.
To date we hold these truths to be Revealed:
Imladris must be Spiritual
To be spiritual, first and always, is to recognize that no other foundation will serve. We are not interested in making another professional conference, nor a networking opportunity, nor a place to merely unwind - even though all those things are valuable and important.
Howard Thurman once said,
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.”
That is a spiritual question. It’s a deep question. Imladris must delve for the deep, for the eternal, and that is, by definition, for the spiritual. By way of clarity, Imladris must make the Spiritual a matter of ongoing action, and not only of talk or of attitude. Always, as we pursue our other principles, it can never come at the cost of spiritual health and abiding in Christ. The alternative is to settle for the practical, or the affectionate, or even the necessary.
We believe that to abide before we act is the call of Imladris.
Imladris embraces the Mythic
To see the world Mythically is to see it with the eyes of your heart. To live in the Mythic is to ask, like Samwise Gamgee as he trundles toward Mordor, “I wonder what kind of tale we’ve fallen into?” From John Eldredge’s Waking the Dead,
“Sam is at that moment thinking mythically. He is wondering in the right way. His question assumes that there is a story; there is something larger going on. He also assumes that they have somehow tumbled into it; been swept up into it. This is exactly what we’ve lost. Things happen to you. The car breaks down, you have a fight with your spouse, or you suddenly figure out how to fix a problem at work. What is really happening? … What sort of tale have I fallen into? is a question that would help us all a great deal if we wondered it for ourselves.”
Or through a different lens, every parable Jesus ever told was Mythic. Embedded within its imagery is a profound truth cleverly disguised as the ordinary. The Mythic truths of life embody this seemingly impenetrable mystery. His parables were purposefully opaque to The Wise while being deep wells of wisdom when seen by the eyes of the heart.
Do not mistake the Mythic for merely the imaginative or the hopeful. Because the Mythic eye indeed perceives the deeper truths, the higher, spiritual realities, and embraces the notion that while we only see our lives through a dark glass, the Mythic truth is what Christ invites us up into.
The habit of perceiving mythically starts with these frames:
- Things are not what they seem.
- There is a great struggle afoot.
- I have a crucial role to play therein.
Committing to the Mythic is, to be candid, challenging. Nevertheless, one cannot commit to the Spiritual, our first principle, without committing to its handmaiden.
We believe a faithful advance into holy mystery is the call of Imladris.
Imladris must be Strategic
To be stubbornly strategic is to put all of our ‘How’ questions on the back burner until we answer the more important ‘Why’ questions. Smart people meeting over foundational issues are prone, by virtue of their talent and skill, to seek solutions, solve problems, and assign action items. That’s good! That’s needed!
And yet…
Imladris must resist the good but human impulse to merely problem solve until the long-range horizon can be discerned. Imladris must keep its eye always on the next century, not the next quarter. We must plan for the world we want our children to work in, and our grandchildren to thrive in. We must be content in knowing we are planting seeds of which we may never see the fruit. To be sure, tactical plans and discrete initiatives will come forth of this movement, but only in their proper time, and never without the clear view of the larger strategy.
We believe that sober and future-facing planning is the call of Imladris.
Imladris is doing something New
Imladris seeks to pioneer something new, fresh, and innovative as compared to trying to right old wrongs or fix something that we might see as bent.
There is a powerful and needed ministry to repair what’s been broken in the world, to heal the sick and bind up the brokenhearted. But we are convicted that the job of Imladris is different and we accept that we’ve been called to be strangers pioneering a strange land and to dig new wells in new valleys. Forgetting what is behind and pressing onward to what is ahead, we seek something bright, and fresh, and never before seen in this world.
This principle, perhaps more than any of the others, will be difficult to discern due mostly to Good Hearts and Good Intentions to fix, restore, and do things better.
Nevertheless, we believe that Imladris’ call is to build something structurally innovative and new.
Imladris strives for Artistic Excellence
In a perfect world this wouldn’t need to be said, but alas we are not in such a world. As it is, Imladris sits at an uneasy seam between the spheres of Celebration and Faith and that seam, we must confess, has occasionally fostered a diminished value for excellence in its well-meaning desire to stay encouraging. We believe that is a false dichotomy.
As citizens of Heaven, as representatives of a wildly creative Father, we will endeavor to be supportive and loving to every artist while also driving toward new levels of creativity, artistic expression, and technical excellence. By building an ecosystem that is firmly founded in the eternal and self-evident value of Beauty and creativity we will inevitably foster the kinds of artists who pull Heaven to Earth in every work of their hands, voices, and spirits.
We believe that Beauty ought never be compromised, even on the altar of kindness.
Imladris embraces the whole Sphere of Celebration
Imladris is a community of Christian creatives but we are not pastors, preachers, nor priests. Drawing from the terminology of The Seven Spheres of Society, we find our citizenship first in heaven, and then in the Sphere of Celebration, or The Mountain of Arts & Entertainment if you prefer that metaphor.
This identification is important because so often those like us find a conflict between their art and their faith, and then feel pressured to choose between them. Imladris embraces the Arts as a holy and anointed part of the body of Christ without an appeal to the spheres of Faith nor Finance for our validation. As is often said there are three “Transcendentals” – the True, The Good, and the Beautiful. For Imladris, we seek to cultivate the Beautiful for its own sake as a fundamentally valid expression of God’s glory.
While we see Interactive as ascendant right now, we are brothers and sisters of all the artists that manifest beauty in other ways. Painters, dancers, chefs, and singers - we are all residents of that coastal kingdom we call 'Art.' And to that end we won't silo ourselves, or build barriers, based on format or media.
We believe that embracing the entirety of the arts as allies is the call of Imladris.
Imladris serves the Common Grace
At Imladris we are compelled to ask “What does the world need from Christian creatives?” The World…the messy, gorgeous, broken, vibrant, fallen, beloved world.
At Imladris we see the need to walk far out into the fallen fields and secular streets to offer whatever kindness, love, and beauty we can with open hands, without any strings attached, and without a wagging finger to be seen amongst us. We long to bring the undiluted scents of heaven to the world and work selflessly for the good of all.
By way of contrast Imladris is not limited to Interactive Entertainment “by Christians, for Christians, and about Christians” and never about monetizing the sheep, so to speak. Those distinctions are all product related anyway, and as we stated on the home page, Imladris will always endeavor to put people in front of products.
Imladris believes that Beauty is God's gift to a hurting world and it is our joy to share it broadly.
