Catching Vision

Hey there.

Welcome to the Deeper Podcast, a podcast that's all about living a life that can love the hell out of this world with a little bit more courage and love.

My name is Reverend Sean and I'm here with Reverend Elaine.

Hey.

Hi, Sean, and we're here in our last episode in our Active Hope series.

We've been exploring the work of eco philosopher Joanna Macy, and all of the ways that we can move through this deep spiral of finding gratitude in this world, despite its tangle blessings, honoring the pain that we have because we're connected to it.

And today we arrive in the latter part of the cycle.

In which we're moving into, uh, seeing with new eyes and going forth and kind of stepping into action in these steps.

And Elaine, that's what your message is all about, but you were just saying something to me about this message let's dive into that.

Yeah.

Well, I was just thinking about my process for writing this sermon and crafting this worship service and this taught the idea that.

Of, of catching an inspiring vision that we need to engage our imaginations to kind of get a grasp on where we're going or where we wanna be or who we wanna be.

That that's a step that comes before the doing.

I f came into this feeling like, I really get that, and yet I kind of had some challenges at first really dropping down into this.

Topic.

Um, and I think it's because I think I was kind of using the wrong part of my brain to try to get into this because that imaginative space is so, um, it moves in its own time.

What is making me think of Yeah, is how often when I'm sitting down to try to imagine things, the quality of those imaginings is often lackluster, but I seem to, um, Be caught unaware in certain moments by really big, beautiful imagination, and that there's a kind of an interesting thing where you, if you try to go looking for it without kind of setting the table, without kind of priming yourself in some ways, um, it can be hard to access directly.

That's really true.

It's almost like you can't look directly at it.

That's what I left a and what I've been thinking about a lot.

There are two things I left the sermon thinking about a lot.

The first is the value of the things we do or the spaces that we set up that aren't directly focused on like producing on creative output.

And yet I think they facilitate connection making.

So I think about.

It feels so cliche, but every time I've gone on a run and intentionally just let my brain relax and the kinds, the scenes that come to me are the solutions that come to me or, um, The ideas that play over and over in my head, or the classic thing of, uh, an idea gelling in the shower.

Uh, but these kind of unplugged places where you let your mind wander.

And also as a parent, how often I'll see, sometimes see my kids kind of.

Zoning out or not doing what they're supposed to do.

And I try to encourage them to do the next task and get the stuff done.

And I noticed that I often shut down those spaces, um, with the people that I live with.

So this really had me pull back.

And interrogate that and think about the value of daydreaming.

And I heard Joanna Macy in one of her talks talk about the rear view mirror of watching television.

And I thought that was so interesting.

That's so often not to dis watching tv.

You know? It's something we all do and the fact that when we watch tv, we're engaging with oftentimes, What has already been conceived of, instead of going into places that help us to put pieces together of the present to imagine how the future might unfold.

And I, I just thought, what of watching TV as kind of a, a nostalgic or rearview window, rear view mirror, um, act.

I thought that was really interesting.

Well, I think we should dive into your message.

So yeah, here it's.

Awesome.

Our reading this morning is entitled and it's written by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican Ashkenazi Jewish feminist author in Hebrew.

means and you shall Love it, is the name of the oldest fixed daily prayer in Judaism, A prayer that is recited morning and night.

Say these words When you lie down and when you rise up, when you go out, and when you return in times of mourning and in times of joy.

Inscribe them on your doorposts.

Embroider them on your garments.

Tattoo them on your shoulders.

Teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies.

Recite them in your sleep.

Here in the cruel shadow of empire, another world is possible.

Thus spoke the prophet Ro Dalton, all together, they have more death than we, but all together we have more life than they.

There is more bloody death in their hands than we could ever wield unless we lay down our souls to become them.

And then we should lose everything.

So instead, imagine winning.

This is your sacred task.

This is your power.

Imagine every detail of winning the exact smell of the summer streets in which no one has been shot.

The muscles you have never unc unclenched from worry gone soft as newborns skin, the sparkling taste of food.

When we know that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed, that the old man under the bridge and the woman wrapping herself in a thin sheet in the backseat of a car, and the children who suck on stones nest under flux of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.

Lean with all your being towards that day when the poor of the world shake down a reign of good fortune out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.

Defend the world in which we win, as if it were your child.

It is your child.

Defend it as if it was your lover.

It is your lover.

When you inhale and when you exhale, breathe the possibilities of another world into the 37.2

trillion cells of your body until it shines with hope, then imagine more.

Imagine rape is unimaginable.

Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor that the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed, the sheer and astonishing shamelessness of it, the vast fortunes made by stealing lives.

The horrible normalcy it came to have is unimaginable to our heirs.

The generation of the free don't waiver.

Don't let despair sink its sharp teeth into the throat from which you sing.

Escalate your dreams.

Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.

Make them burn clear as a starry drinking Gord over the grim fog of exhaustion and keep walking.

Hold hands, share water.

Keep imagining so that we and the children of our children's children may live.

What a powerful reading.

Let's talk about imagination.

My friends, I have packed for a trip while sweating in hot weather and then arrived at my destination to discover.

A snowstorm and to discover myself with a suitcase way too full of t-shirts, because I just couldn't imagine and believe while I was so overheated that it could actually be cold somewhere else.

When my kids were little babies, I would receive lovely hand-me-downs from a friend with a toddler, and some part of me would actually think, oh, that's nice, but there will never come a day when my little baby will fit into these gigantic monster child pajamas.

I mean, two tea, that's just nuts.

I have seen and tried to study multiple two-dimensional renderings of this new sanctuary, yet when I finally took an in-person tour, it was like I had seen absolutely nothing prior to that moment because personally, I couldn't yet really imagine that building until I physically walked by its walls in beams.

I've always thought of myself as a creative, imaginative person.

It's a part of my identity.

It's something I do well in some arenas, and yet there are the most simple situations in which my imagination just does not seem to fire.

I can't quite imagine that another reality is actually possible.

And then there are the places where I actively don't try to imagine many, many times every day of my life where I actively avoid thinking about the future and the implications of my actions.

Every time I take out the garbage, every time I fill my car with gas, every time I order something on Amazon or finish a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of contact lens solution, or whatever other plastic packaging I'm discarding.

I think it's fair to say that I have made so many efforts over the course of time to not imagine the implications of my everyday actions and to not feel the guilt and sadness and fear they bring up that I've been practicing numbing out more than feeling, and definitely way more than imagining writer and activist, Rebecca Solnit names how these experiences lead to moral injury.

Moral injury that stems from the impact on the psyche of witnessing or feeling complicit in something wrong.

We try to avoid seeing and thinking about it and adopt a numbing willful obliviousness, which in turn creates inaction over time.

In a time when our climate mess demands swift action inspired by imaginations on fire with possibility.

This reinforced moral injury generates the exact opposite of what this moment calls for, and that's not what any of us want.

We want to feel enliven, connected, empowered, and hopeful, and that's why we are focusing on the practice of Active Hope this month and the work of Eco philosopher Joanna Macy.

Who invites us into an ongoing spiritual practice in the form of a spiral comprised of four phases.

And whether you realize it or not, over the past weeks, we have been step by step walking through these phases of the spiral.

So I'm gonna share them now just to orient us to why we have come to imagination today.

The first step of the spiral is gratitude, which grounds us in the present.

And I invites us to identify and cherish what we love most about life on earth.

Because when we get clear about what we love, we get clear about our true work.

And then the next step in the spiral is honoring our pain, which was last week with Kathleen Rudd.

This means allowing that underground river of emotions we live with in response to the Earth's suffering to be validated and expressed so that we can see how these painful feelings, which we share with so many other people are also evidence of our love and our deep connectedness to the earth.

And then through honoring our pain, we come to the next step in the spiral, which is seeing with new eyes, this is what we're talking about today.

And then the fourth step in the spiral is going forth, doing what you can do.

Oh my gosh, I spontaneously lost my place here in our script.

So it's no mistake that seeing with new eyes what we're talking about today, it can only follow the experience of honoring our pain.

And I wanna zoom in now on the connection between those two steps.

Honoring our pain and seeing with new eyes for just a moment.

Because we live in a culture that is terrified of grief and makes virtually no place for us to acknowledge and process our grief communally.

The answer to How are you is fine.

If someone shows no outward signs of sadness after losing a loved one, we say they're doing well with their grief.

In a workplace, it's typical to be granted.

Three days of paid bereavement leave for the loss of an immediate family member, and one day for the loss of other family members.

Our bizarre avoidance of grief leaves us with a story that grief has no place in communal life.

That sadness signals a kind of failure.

And that grief might even be contagious if we talk about it, which is why I love church so much because here we courageously engage with the hardest realities of being human.

And indeed we practice practicing together, being human.

It's what we do.

So this past Tuesday, I pulled into my garage after an evening meeting at church and my daughter, who I really thought would be asleep in bed, stepped out to greet me before the car had even turned off.

Hey, where were you mama? And as I thought about how to explain it, I felt a little burst of insight.

I was doing one of my favorite things I get to do all week.

Actually, I was facilitating grief group.

It has been such a gift to facilitate our grief circle this spring together with Joyce Trujillo from our caring team.

It's a space for people who are mourning the death of a loved one or of multiple loved ones, and it is such a tender, honest space where no one has to pretend they're okay or perform doing well with their grief.

A place where you can say out loud those things that privately make you wonder if you're losing your mind.

There is no compulsory cheeriness in this space, no pressure to move on or keep it together or to even make sense.

And yet it is also one of the most inspiring places where I get to hang out all week.

Because it's a place that can't help but to touch not only the heart, but to touch the imagination.

In this group where the shared experience is one of bereavement, that is a feeling bereft like you've been robbed of something, like you have been torn apart.

This shared experience generates a community that affirms through its very existence that you are not alone.

A community of, yes.

Yeah, me too.

And I've been there and I'm so relieved.

It's not just me.

The grief circle can't help but to be an imaginable space, A space to catch a vision of what happens next when the time is right, a vision that continued survival might be possible and that joy might visit you again.

A space to hear that someone else has wandered as deeply into the wilderness of grief as you have.

But now they've moved on to new coordinates while not having let go of their connection to the person who died.

And deep in the imagination, some sparkles of hope light up when we are despairing, when we feel helpless and powerless, it helps to borrow hope and imagination from each other.

It's just about impossible to hop directly from being immobilized in despair to actively building the life you wanna live in or to building a better world.

And the bridge between these two realms of hopelessness and courageously creating a future you would want to live in is imagination.

When we are hopeless and stuck, the next step is to imagine that another world is possible, even if you are definitely not there right now and engaging in that imaginative act, it asks us to make a leap of courage, a leap that sometimes brings us right to the brink of how much vulnerability and heart tenderness we think we can even tolerate.

And there might even be some part of us that wonders whether we might be annihilated by crossing threshold into imagining a different reality for ourselves, that there might be some strange part of us that believes that the numbing blanket of hopelessness is somehow safer, even though deep down we know that it will take us out like falling asleep in the snow.

So we acknowledge these misgivings.

And nevertheless, our work is to work the muscle of the imagination over and over, getting our reps in, opening up to the possibility that life could be different, readying ourselves to catch a vision of what might be possible.

And this can happen in different, different ways.

It might look like intentionally creating a space to ground ourselves in the present, connect to gratitude for what is, and then asking ourselves what we'd like to have happen.

Or it could simply mean allowing ourselves to daydream and choosing to move through life with the gigantic butterfly net of our imagination.

Just wide open and waving in the wind and seeing what inspiration might just fly in.

Because we can't force inspiration, but we can create a space hospitable to its arrival.

We can go out there and buy ourselves a huge butterfly net.

This is getting kind of theoretical, so I wanna invite us into some exercises together, All right, Eileen, I'm gonna pause your message.

For a minute because you do something really great, which is in the service.

You invited people to come up and do some sharing and some reflecting back from people in the audience.

And I thought we might do this part of the service a little differently because we're on this podcast and kind of invite people to go through this process of imagining and catching that vision of a different future, um, you know, virtually through this medium of podcast.

Does that sound good? Yeah.

That sounds great.

So, so can you talk us through that kind of, what's the first step in this visioning process? Well, Elise Boldings process involves three levels of visioning, and the first step is all about intentionality.

So moving away from kind of generally nebulously.

Wishing for good in the future and honing in on what are some clear intentions that we can set, um, and move towards.

So what we do in this first step is, Imagine the world 30 years into the future and bolding chose 30 years because this is a time in the future that a lot of us will live to see, and that those people who we love and we're living with right now will leave live to see as well.

So why don't we invite people just to take a second to settle themselves.

Yes.

And, you know, just taking, taking some breath that feel a little bit maybe deeper.

Um, You know, even kind of letting, depending on what you're doing, right, if you're, if you're driving, please don't close your eyes.

But if you're just sitting and listening, you take a moment, close your eyes, and then just imagine that 30 years into the future, what do you want to see happen? That kind of visions populate your mind.

Now, I know everyone's doing this right now.

And as they're seeing those visions, is there something that's coming up for you, Elaine? Yeah, I'm seeing clear flowing water.

I'm seeing an absence of guns, an absence of violence.

I'm seeing people with an abundance to eat and a system of food production where that makes sense and where everybody has enough.

Mm-hmm.

And let's see, I'm seeing clear.

Skies and breathable air.

Excellent air.

How about you, Sean? What are you seeing? 30 years from now, I'm seeing communities that are really strong, like neighbors who know each other and are committed to each other's wellbeing.

Um, and there's a sense of being able to move through conflict differently.

Um, the difference doesn't mean need to be in division.

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing right now.

Wonderful.

So what's the, if that's the first step as this intention setting in 30 years, what's the second step of Elise Boundings.

Process.

Yeah.

Well, the second step is great because it takes us perhaps in a surprise direction of moving backwards.

Yeah.

Into the memory.

So the idea with this second phase is that we're unlocking the images that we keep stored in our mental warehouse because our memory can offer us.

Um, great clarity of visioning.

Um, and all of those images that we have in the bank of our memory, they can help us to kind of populate and imagine with more specificity and depth what could happen in the future.

So step two is stepping into a happy childhood memory.

So close your eyes, wherever you are or not if you're driving, but take a moment in your imagination and step into a happy childhood memory.

It doesn't have to be the entire arc of a story.

It could be just a particular place where you felt good, and when you have that happy childhood memory.

Start using your inward senses to experience that scene, to see the colors, to feel the textures, to smell the smells, to hear the sounds, and even look around and notice the expression on people's faces, or if there's no one around, just imagine what you might be expressing with your face and your body.

And now, and, and during the service, you invited three people, myself included, to come up and do this and then share out.

So I'm gonna play the clip of their happy childhood memories of what came to mind in the service.

I had a memory of being a small child and being like tucked in at night.

And so I'm in my like small, like twin bed and especially like after the sheets had been washed, so there's kind of that fresh smell and kind of climbing in.

It's a little bit kind of crisp feeling, but soft.

And then my mother would usually come in and like fluff the blanket up and it would kind of land on me and I would just feel the kind of pressure of the blanket, um, kind of pushing down, but feeling warm and cozy.

And even if the blanket went over my head, which is a part of the game, was like sometimes it goes over your head, right? And then you can't see anything, but you know you're still safe because there's someone on the other side of the blanket.

Um, and then you kind of pull the blanket back and so you're kind of just wrapped up and safe in that kind of bundle.

I think it was like July or August, I was going to take my final test for horse riding and I had those special pants on, you know, that have the skinny hair and what is it, John Per John pers.

Okay.

I had that on.

I had, um, a special hat that was on that made, made everyone know I was a beginner so that they didn't gimme the wrong horse.

I remember flies and this poor little pony, it was not a horse.

Okay? It was, but I wanted to get on a horse.

The pony was just covered in these flies.

And I would keep doing this and that would make the, uh, pony nervous.

And I didn't know that I was making them pony nervous.

And, uh, then my, uh, instructor who's on a big horse, He is telling me to calm down.

Calm down, Sarah.

It's okay.

But then the flies, you know, I'm so worried about the horse and being bugged.

I can say that, right? Mm-hmm.

Um, anyway, it, it happened that I bugged the horse so much.

Yeah.

He bugged me, all me off.

I flew over his head into, you know what? And I remember the smell of getting this stuff off of me, and it never left me.

Um, I didn't graduate, but it was a good memory.

It's something I go back to a lot when I fail.

I was about seven and I was on, uh, at, uh, at summer and we were on Kawaii.

And, um, I was in the, the, there's a stream that comes down by our house and, and it forms a pool.

And we were the, all, all, all of us and our friends were in the, in this pond from the stream and, um, jumping off the rocks and yelling and splashing and having a good time.

And our dog went down the lane a bit and found a dead toad to roll in.

And she came back pleased with herself and we tossed her into the pond and grabbed some, uh, things that are called shampoo ginger.

And it's a, it's a type of red ginger and it's got gushy stuff inside.

That's a really a lot like shampoo and it'll clean your hair.

And so we got a bunch of shampoo ginger and we started, you know, weapon the dog with it to make her smell really nice and continue to jump off the rocks.

And, you know, you can smell the ginger and you can smell the, the smell of, of, of mountain stream water and you can smell the sunshine that was on us.

And here, the, the cries of the children, I don't remember any grownups, but there must have been, um, it just was kids, uh, and the dog.

Yeah.

And the warmth of the summer I loved how, um, different they all were.

Firstly, the memories now that we have those kind of vivid stories in our minds, what's the third and final step? So the third and final step is actually going back to our imaginings about the world 30 years from now that we initially brainstormed about and set our intentions for.

So with our imagination, sharpened from having engaged with our memory, um, close your eyes and envision once again, uh, the world 30 years from now.

I'm gonna ask you to do it in a very specific way.

Imagine yourself.

Standing in front of a huge, thick hedge stretching as far as you can see to the left and to the right.

And on the other side of this hedge lies the world that we hope for 30 years from now, where the intentions that we identified earlier have been realized.

And you can move through the hedge or over the hedge any way you want and have a good look around.

And as you're looking, keep in mind that your goal is to be an observer and to collect information that can be reported back on.

So, Sean, we did do this imagining with panelists in the service, can we play an excerpt of what they experienced when they looked over the hedge? Yeah, let's play those clips.

I, uh, saw like a bunch of like apartments or town homes, but they were all oriented towards this like common courtyard.

So it wasn't like houses that were like pointing in different directions, kind of.

They were all connected.

And in the courtyard it was like, there was garden, there was trees, there were like kids running around and screaming and, and joyfulness of course.

Um, and you see people like leave their homes with something to bring to someone else.

And so there's this way in which the homes would flow into each other with support and care.

Lovely.

You mind if mind if I build on that? Yeah, build on it.

Um, I have a vision where over the, um, the hedge is, um, our, our towns, it's a town with streets that are no longer for, um, for lanes wide.

They've taken the center of the, um, of the road and made trees and plants and gardens and, um, all you hear is, um, an electric bus going, um, around and bells from people on their bicycles.

And, um, there's no, um, you know, there's no escaping this, um, loud cars with, um, radios blaring or anything like that.

All you really hear are the electric bus and the bells from the bus.

Okay.

I looked over and the first thing I saw were lots of trees and lots of green.

Um, it was like countryside and I had to work hard to see a town.

Um, but it was low rather than tall.

And, um, and there were people moving about, it was very quiet.

Um, no sounds of industry, uh, you know, cars and banging and clanging and that kind of thing.

Uh, it was, it was quiet, but what struck me most was the green and the sunshine, the clear skies, the blue skies.

So I loved the sensory detail that our panelists shared, the quietness of the bus.

Uh, Sean, I could totally imagine the community that you were talking about where people were helping each other out and facing towards each other.

And then I love that in Polly's world.

It took her a while to even see the buildings, because the trees and the greenness was just so lush and present.

I felt transported by their sharing and imagining, and I'm so curious what everyone who's listening, what their visions were.

Yeah.

You know, and pooling these visions.

I, I was also surprised how much more vi vivid my own imagining came to.

You know, going through that exercise, um, I'm not a huge vis visual person, but it got me there mm-hmm.

In terms of that hedge and, and seeing these, this glimpse of our future that is really based in desire and, and potential and, um, and, and can be cultivated through our active choices.

So I love that.

Me too.

And what really landed for me in the experience of doing these exercises together is that every Sunday just about, we name that each one of us has a piece of the truth, and that we have to come together and share our truths and our experiences and also our visions, you know, to make sense of this life right now and to make sense of where we're headed together.

And so, you know, to me, The different visions that came up.

They weren't competing visions of the future, but it was like everyone has access to some unique slice of what could be.

Um, and that I think is also uniquely relevant to the gifts that they can offer.

All right.

You have just a little bit left of your message, so we're gonna drop back into that, um, that piece so people can hear Yes.

How you wrap this all up.

my friends.

We all live together on this one amazing planet.

And as we journey into the future together, let us hold this truth close.

Another world is possible.

And here's the thing.

Each one of us holds a different piece.

Each one of us in this space had a different vision of the future.

And that means that each one of us has a different vision to capture about what could be and what work is ours.

Because we know as Unitarian Universalists, each one of us holds a piece of the truth.

Each one of us is, uh, the world needs us to capture a vision that is uniquely ours so that we can act on it.

Now is the time to escalate our dreams.

As this morning's reading encourages us, make your dreams burn so fiercely that you can follow them down any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way from where we stand now, moving towards our visions.

It might feel as absurd as standing on a beach and packing our suitcase for a snowstorm.

As impossible as a little baby growing up into an adult.

But we know that very real change unfolds from ideas that once seemed abjectly, unreachable.

And indeed, some of our best changes have come from those ideas and imaginations may our collective dreaming invite us into a aliveness.

Despite all the uncertainty, may our imaginations lead us into lives deeply worth living because they are lives grounded in meaning and purpose, in generosity, in connection, and grounded in the fierce joy that springs from doing what matters most together.

May it be so and amen.

Well that about wraps up this episode of the diva podcast and our series on active hope.

We are moving into a serious that we're called time.

Well wasted.

Which is all about leisure, rest, non productivity.

And pleasure and how these essential aspects of life are actually acts of resistance in a world that tries to commodify us.

Productivity guys, us efficiency, eyes, us.

Um, And how we can lean into that.

So we can lean deeper into our humanity.

That's going to be a great series.

Including a lot of hosts.

Joy, just a lot of joy.

So hope you are stay tuned for that, you know? I've received some really beautiful feedback in the past few weeks about this podcast and how much it means to people.

You know, saying that the messages that they receive are life giving and that they're real medicine.

And so I just wanted to say, thank you.

Thank you for all of you for listening out there.

Some of you, we know some of you.

We don't and that is all.

Okay.

Well, I am going to wrap this up.

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Thanks.