Inspiration

UU thoughts, sermons, music

When normal feels impossible …

johnnyawwsome

“‘Only it is so very lonely here!’ Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks. ‘Oh, don’t go on like that!’ cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. ‘Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come to-day. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!’

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. ‘Can you keep from crying by considering things?’ she asked.

‘That’s the way it’s done,’ the Queen said with great decision: ‘nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let’s consider your age to begin with—how old are you?’

‘I’m seven and a half exactly.’

‘You needn’t say “exactly,”’ the Queen remarked: ‘I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.’

‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.

‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.’

Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”” – from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol

“Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” – Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ –

“One Hundred and Eighty Degrees” – Federico Moramarco

Have you considered the possibility
that everything you believe is wrong,
not merely off a bit, but totally wrong,
nothing like things as they really are?
If you’ve done this, you know how durably fragile
those phantoms we hold in our heads are,
those wisps of thought that people die and kill for,
betray lovers for, give up lifelong friendships for.
If you’ve not done this, you probably don’t understand this poem,
or think it’s not even a poem, but a bit of opaque nonsense,
occupying too much of your day’s time,
so you probably should stop reading it here, now.
But if you’ve arrived at this line,
maybe, just maybe, you’re open to that possibility,
the possibility of being absolutely completely wrong,
about everything that matters.
How different the world seems then:
everyone who was your enemy is your friend,
everything you hated, you now love,
and everything you love slips through your fingers like sand.

Collective Imagination and Liberation

johnnyawwsome

“We are in an imagination battle. Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and so many others are dead because, in some white imagination, they were dangerous. And that imagination is so respected that those who kill, based on an imagined, radicalized fear of Black people, are rarely held accountable.

Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of ability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone’ else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.” – adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

What happens to a dream deferred? Or all together denied? What happens when an entire nation, already reeling from a pandemic, witnesses a murder before “its” very eyes? Does poetry have anything to say in such a situation? Might a piece of art console us? Might a poem begin to tell a story that we are finally ready to hear? Might that new story heal us? Might new dreams arise?

there is an edge (ode to radical imagination) by adrienne maree brown

There is an edge
Beyond which we cannot grasp the scale
Of our universe.
That border,
That outer boundary
Is imagination.
The only known edge of existence
The only one we can prove by universal experience –

We can imagine so much!
We can only imagine so much.

If perhaps it is a function of our collective minds
A dream of our endless nights
Then there will be abundance so long as we can imagine it –
Abundance on earth
If we can imagine it
Or abundance of earths
A sphere for every tribe
And every combination.
And to have it all
All we need is to remember
there is an edge
And grow our dreams beyond it.

– inspired by #ArtChangeUS

Thirty Days of Love

johnnyawwsome

“Thirty Days of Love is our annual celebration that runs approximately from Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January through Valentine’s Day in February. It is an opportunity to lift up the ways Unitarian Universalists and many of our partner organizations are building and organizing by taking bold, courageous action for intersectional racial justice.

In 2021, 30 Days of Love will focus on four themes from a recently published report called Widening the Circle of Concern, which was developed by the Commission on Institutional Change, a UUA Board commissioned group charged with researching, reporting, and making recommendations for transforming white supremacy and other oppressions in the institutional history and practices of the UUA and its 1,000-plus congregations and covenanted communities.” – Find more here

We think this is a wonderful project. We will be following along with Side with Love and on Mondays and Thursdays will post content for 30 days of Love.

Contemplating death and being a good ancestor

johnnyawwsome

“In this new world, you and I make it up as we go along, not because we lack expertise or planning skills, but because that is the nature of reality. Reality changes shape and meaning because of our activity. And it is constantly new. We are required to be there, as active participants. It can’t happen without us and nobody can do it for us.” – Margaret J. Wheatley

Why contemplating death changes how you think by Jonathan Jong 

Birth of The Unitarian Church in Transylvania

Robert

“Dávid Ferenc” (@unitariandavidferenc) posted this earlier today (6 January 2021) on Facebook:

On this day, January 6, in 1568 king John Sigismund assembled a Diet to be held in the town Torda (today Turda in Romania). At this Diet our Bishop Francis David inspired the delegates to later approve the first toleration edict of freedom of faith among the Christian religions.

This was a new and revolutionary idea of freedom of religion at that time, and therefore January 6 1568 also is considered by tradition to be the birth of The Unitarian Church.

Here’s the famous painting by Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch showing Bishop Francis David at the Diet of Torda. A painting well known by Unitarians.

Francis David at the Diet of Torda, 6 January 1568

Imagine New Beginnings

johnnyawwsome

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger. Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” – Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

A Month of Imagination

johnnyawwsome

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” – Theodore Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss)

This month we will be focusing on imagination in our services and our posts. We will have meditations about imagination posted on Wednesdays and articles/information about the spiritual practice of imagination on Saturdays. We hope you will join us on our imagination journey.

Here are some spiritual practices to consider –

The practice of waking up to possibility.

The healing practice of putting ourselves in other people’s shoes

                  The practice of completing the world by conjuring up its missing parts.

                 The practice of allowing hope to widen our view.

Inner Peace and Stillness

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Breathed into the World by Rev. Sandra Fees

Whoever you are, wherever you go,

May you know the stillness of winter

and the call to love.

May you see the moon

silvering the night sky

and let the dark of midnight

plunge you into your truest self

and fling you back out again

to a world in need of who you are.

May there be the familiar carols

you know by heart

and new melodies to set you free.

May there be feasting and frolicking,

kindness and wonderment.

And may there be wise people

to follow a star in the East

and a child to teach us to love

and enough magic

to let the imagination go wild,

to let Christmas arrive with its enchantments,

with its glitter, glow, and gold,

to let what wants to be born break through.

May the presence of the holy

crowd out fear, hate, and worry

and proclaim in this moment

that peace and goodwill might yet

be breathed into the world,

and avow that we too can give birth to love,

wherever we go, whoever we are.

Mysticism is part of Stillness

johnnyawwsome

“What does it mean to be still and know I am God? The instruction to be still in Hebrew means to let go, stop striving, slacken and let drop. It’s a picture of loosening our clenched grip on the circumstances and outcome and trusting God… I’m the first to admit that being still goes against my instinct. We are fixers.  We want to make it happen and just keep pushing through. But the call to be still is a call to surrender.” – Lisa Apello

In This Time of Waiting (Advent Prayer) by Cricket Hall

Close-up study of a fir branch, with green needles

In this time of waiting, may we hold the world in our hearts.

In this time of waiting, may we hold each other’s hands.

In this time of waiting, may we be thoughtful and introspective.

In this time of waiting, may we delight in the darkness and all it teaches us.

In this time of waiting, may we rekindle the fires of hope, love, joy, and peace within ourselves and our communities.

In this time of waiting, may we become ready for the coming day.