Sanctuaries and Sins by Mandy Kampen

One of Imago’s themes for 2024 is the idea of sanctuary (a sacred or holy place). It’s a known but not exactly significant idea in a lot of our culture; and honestly, as a whole, we don’t hold much as sacred. Individually, though, and in communities such as churches, we define certain things and certain spaces (even sometimes certain people) as holy. At Imago, we try to limit the dividing lines between sacred and secular as much as possible. But I must confess that there are aspects of Imago that are very much holy to me.

One of those aspects is the space we make for each and every individual to work out their faith, their God-view, and their understanding of how to follow Jesus in this world. We honor the individual journey with the faith that says "all are welcome" and "all will be redeemed." Possibly my very favorite space in which we do this is Eats, Drinks, and Orthodoxy.

We started meeting once a month at Pizza Works in the Heights to talk about faith over a decade ago and reestablished the meetings when Covid restrictions were lifted. Over time, we’ve discussed sacraments, art & censorship, Muslim & Christian partnerships, the Lord’s prayer, and many other topics. This year, we revisit a literal classic - the seven deadly sins and contrary virtues.

We first did a series on the seven deadly sins (pride, wrath, gluttony, sloth, lust, greed, envy) for Lent one year. As I was studying, I fell down quite a few rabbit holes into art, theories, and philosophy, all dedicated to this idea that there are “archetypal” violations we as a human race can make against ourselves and one another. The depth and nuance that thinkers and artists applied to these concepts was inspired, sometimes awe-inspiring. 

When I realized that our typical approach to “fighting sin” is to do just that - combat it, battle it, pour warring energy into it - I became curious about another idea that has been much less explored. The contrary virtues (humility, patience, temperance, diligence, chastity, kindness) are set up as the way to overcome these sins, though the how can be a little fuzzy. And there is definitely not the same breadth of imagination in our exploration of these ideas as we’ve been able to apply to the sins. However, I truly believe that by focusing our energy on developing the virtues, we can starve out the roots of the sins until they become diminished in our lives.

And so we want to give both sides of these ethical coins space for discovery this year. In January, we kicked off with a discussion on gluttony and all the less obvious ways it can show up in our lives. In February, we’ll devote our discussion to temperance (the contrary virtue to gluttony), hopefully finding ourselves enlightened and better prepared to empower ourselves as we seek the increased power of the Spirit in our lives.