Each month, WUUC explores a theme of the month… January’s Soul Matters theme is IMAGINATION.
The question we will explore is: What does it mean to be a people of Imagination? Here are a few thoughts to ponder as we consider, discuss, learn and play with this theme.
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Imagination’s great gift is improvement. At least that is what adults are usually taught. Yes, imagination can help to heal the world. Imagination moves us forward. It makes us better.
We are urged to imagine and build the world we dream of. A world with more justice. More peace. More love.
And to do this work, we are often called to imagine a world that is real, but broken. To imagine pain and suffering that we have not experienced; hunger and starvation, poverty, violence, war, oppression, tyranny and, for many, insurmountable suffering of the heart, mind, and spirit.
But Imagination isn’t just a force that drives us forward toward a more perfect future,
There are ways in which this view of imagination can impoverish us. It can steal the stage. It can shut out the experience of the perfection of the present. When we review what has been painful in our past, and what could be problematic in our future, we suffer unnecessarily.
Imagination pulls the sacred into our impoverished present. Through the lens of imagination, we can perceive the common as precious, even miraculous.
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Perhaps our most important work is to re-imagine imagination.
- When you got out of bed this morning. After a shower, you didn’t just pull on fresh clothes, you also pulled out a jewelry box and slipped on your grandmother’s ring. As you slid it on your finger, she slid, not just into your memory, but into your day. Now, because of imagination, you aren’t just elegant, you’re accompanied.
Or how about that invisible friend of yours when you were a child? Imagination made sure you didn’t travel through those early years alone. It conjured up a loyal friend.
Author Unknown
- The laughter of our children becomes the sound of angels. Sunshine on our face becomes a greater treasure than gold.
- … Wouldn’t it be great if we walked around surrounded by our souls, so that they were the first things people saw… Then people would judge us by who we really are. … Imagine no more racism, ageism, sexism, fatism, shortism, homophobia. Imagine falling in love with who a person is, just by looking at them. … Imagine people knowing by your soul…
Author Unknown
- What will become of a failure? What can be built with an honest mistake? Keep paying attention. Keep dreaming and supposing that more is possible. We don’t know the ending. And if you are tired, then it must be time to rest. Staying curious is like a muscle. We flex – reaching for what we don’t yet know. And relax – leaving space for what is yet to come.
Rev. Theresa I. Soto
- The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
- If a fairy could grant me one wish, it would be to give every child an imagination that would last a lifetime.
This article was Inspired by Soul Matters January 2021. It was adapted and embellished, and some parts were copied, by Linda Sherry.
Find the Soul Matters packet for January here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mvJCA99usfsambHAJkzW5MUroxn6H7tI/view?usp=sharing
The Sacred Word supplement for January is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_KU5F0b0w0l0xMcNJyIAX_TlFLSd3XGK/view?usp=sharing