Soulful Home for Parents & Families
What Does It Mean to Be A Family of Imagination?
Find Your Packet Here:
https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com/uploads/9/4/5/0/94501751/sm_2021-1_sh_imagination.pdf
Being guided by “what if…” is something humans do really well. We can imagine possibilities, informed by past observations and experiences, to create new realities that did not exist before. I consider this one of humanity’s great superpowers–along with our (theoretical) ability to collaborate well with one another. It marks our unique place on the interconnected web of all existence.
How well are we doing, then, using our superpowers? Do we, as Unitarian Universalists, engage our imaginations as a religious exercise, a way to connect with Source, and in service of creating a more just, harmonious, and loving world? Our imaginations can bring us great joy and satisfaction, and they can also inspire a new, better reality–the kind our faith calls us to make! But shifting to that latter piece–imagination as responsibility to make the world better–is tough.
I don’t know if Mr. Rogers was the first to say it, but it is his voice I often hear in my mind when I think “Play is the work of childhood.” With that in mind, together as a Soul Matters sharing circle, we are going to play and make-believe our way through the month, knowing that as we do so, we will be working out and exercising one of our species’ most powerful muscles for making change: our imaginations.
Our Around the Neighborhood activity turns expressions of improbability into an I-Spy challenge, reinforcing the idea that “impossible” is often all in the way we’re looking.
Our On the Porch activity links past and future, using a very touching activity borrowed from our Soul Matters small group packets, where we release internalized “mustn’ts” and instead imagine the glee and power of our lives free of their lurking.
In an empowering act of whimsy, we invite our imaginary friends into conversation, sitting down to a snack and an exchange of ideas with the inventions of our own psyches.
The packet is full of such games and pastimes and endeavors this month, ways to stretch and tone and invigorate our imaginations. We need strong imaginations! Twenty twenty-one awaits; what will it be? What paradigms will prevail? Dare we apply our superpowers and our principles to the creation of the new: the society our children are growing into, and deserve?
We do dare–we imagine, plan, create, shape, and share–and we do it together.
On January 26th at 8:00 pm we’ll meet live on Zoom to talk about what we’ve learned and discovered. Can’t wait to see you then!
Join Zoom Meeting HERE