Enlarged Imagination: Reflections from a Life Spent Listening to Others
You’re invited to Regent's 2025 Evening Public Lecture series! Join us in the chapel or tune in online to explore theology, culture, and much more with this year’s summer faculty.
To livestream this and other Evening Public Lectures, visit us at rgnt.net/live.
About the Lecture
Throughout Scripture, we’re invited to use our imaginations. Sometimes that invitation is conveyed to us through imagery: God as king or rock or shepherd. At times it’s an explicitly stated invitation to exercise our imagination: “Consider the birds of the air.” And we also receive parables spoken by Jesus, like that of the Good Samaritan, that invite us into story.
According to Susan S. Phillips, "Imagination is a God-given human faculty. Like all our faculties, it may be directed toward good or ill. As a spiritual director, I listen to people seek God’s guidance as they imagine. In this time of change and upheaval, it seems especially important to exercise sanctified imagination as Christians, citizens, persons. Together, we’ll consider what that might mean."
About the Speaker
Susan S. Phillips is a spiritual director and professor of sociology and Christian spirituality. She earned a PhD in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as the Executive Director of New College Berkeley, an affiliate for the Graduate Theological Union, from 1994 to 2022.
In addition to teaching in a number of institutions within the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and serving on its doctoral faculty, Susan has taught for many years for Fuller Theological Seminary, Regent College, and San Francisco Theological Seminary. Her books, like her teaching, explore the intersection of Christian spirituality and social science, and include the award-winning Crisis of Care: Affirming and Restoring Caring Practices in the Helping Professions, Candlelight: Illuminating the Art of Spiritual Direction, and The Cultivated Life: From Ceaseless Striving to Receiving Joy. Susan loves listening to people as they pray and seek the Holy in spiritual direction, retreats, and everyday life.
Dr. Phillips is teaching Spiritual Practices in the Company of Others from July 28 to August 1 as part of Regent’s 2025 Summer Programs.
Location
Regent College, 5800 University Blvd, Vancouver, BC
Parking
Regent College no longer has its own parking lot. Paid parking options are available nearby with metered parking on Western Parkway, among other locations, and covered pay parking at the Thunderbird Parkade. See parking.ubc.ca for more info.
