The theology of the late 20th century reflects a courageous retrieval of God as beauty, but integrating such perspectives into the practice of teaching theology is difficult. This field has suffered both from disproportionate academic focus on system thinking and from excessive emphasis on ministerial professionalism. How can we acknowledge the role of imagination as an alternative wavelength of knowing, a mode more receptive than an analytical approach? Should not imagination be a key wavelength for translating what is inevitably unreachable into what is existential and energizing? Thus, this article describes an experimental summer course that sought to awaken the sleeping beauty of imagination. It involved four stages: establishing a certain quality of attention; exploring the prior sense of wonder that underlies our converging roads of searching for meaning; an experience of the Gospel as narrative or drama of call and conversion; cinematic evocation of the courage for countercultural choices. (Contains 3 notes.)