By Rev. Janet Onnie
May 18, 2025
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” If you’re a subscriber to process theology, all seasons are seasons for change. As we heard in the reading, “We must choose every moment how we will relate to the new world aborning in our midst.”
The events of these past few months have given us a glimpse of one possible ‘new world’ aborning. And it’s not one designed to soothe anxiety. The specter of a lawless, incompetent dictatorship reigning over a disintegrating physical and social environment leaves many of us mightily anxious about the future. Even those who don’t pay much attention to current events seem to be on edge. There are all sorts of mini outbursts about things that really aren’t the things the outbursts seem to be about. (pause) We are all exhibiting the signs of being an anxious people, even before unusual weather patterns, technological breakdowns, a convicted felon winning a free and fair election for highest office in the land, and an unelected billionaire given free reign to rid the government of inefficiency. And people.
Anxious people fight about stupid things. To quote the religious consultant Sarai Rice, “It’s always easier, although rarely helpful, to fight about personal behavior rather than address larger realities, especially if the larger realities have to do with decline or loss. When we don’t know what to do about the big important things, we fight about what somebody said.” Or, I might add, the color of the paint, the volume of the choir, or the placement of a comma.
There are a lot of big, important things facing us that threaten our safety and stability, not only locally and nationally, but globally. How will we meet the challenges of a changing environment? Demographic changes? Technological discoveries? Are there better economic models that provide a more equitable distribution of wealth? The really marvelous reality is that we have the intellectual and spiritual capacity to meet these challenges. There are people all over the world who are thinking about and modeling alternatives to our current practices. Who are using their imaginations. And imagination is what we’re going to be talking about today. Imagination is what will get us through these anxious times.
Physician and holistic health guru Deepak Chopra believes the world is creating a new identity in this anxious age. He suggests that, by merging science and spirituality, we’re transcending deep-seated divisions and cultivating a karmic kinship as “global citizens.” Chopra says this universal evolution is activated by our ability to imagine: “The worst use of imagination is anxiety. The best is creativity. We must choose creativity in order to transform the world.” Although I agree with this, I don’t particularly look forward to the discomfort of the process. I suspect you don’t either.
The Navy SEALS have a saying: “Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” During their training, the SEALS go through what’s called ‘surf torture’. The process involves everyone linking arms and laying down in the frigid ocean until the body reaches early stages of hypothermia. They do this every day before they take on whatever other tasks are required. The point is for them to stay focused on what they need to accomplish, no matter how uncomfortable they feel.
The Navy SEAL trainers knew their philosophy. The stoic philosophers, specifically Lucius Anneaus Seneca, proposed we create situations of discomfort so we can appreciate the comforts we have. Also, enduring discomfort teaches you to have a higher tolerance of that which is uncomfortable. Appreciation and tolerance. Well, we have not had to create a situation of discomfort: we have had discomfort thrust upon us. We are all living in the frigid ocean of uncertainty where appreciation and especially tolerance are hard to come by. It’s easy to lay there in the surf imaging a warm shower of peace and justice and rainbows and puppies and unicorns. But unless we wish to be overtaken by hypothermia we’re going to have to get out of the ocean and focus on something. And – as it’s always been — there’s a lot of ‘somethings’ upon which to turn our focus. Our imaginations can be helpful in creating that focus.
Creativity and imagination are not the same thing. Creative activity aims to do something purposeful. Like paint a picture. Knit a sweater. Write a poem or a piece of music. Or invent a better mousetrap. Or a system of national healthcare. Or a trusted community where people can find meaningful service and age with grace and dignity. As Chopak says, we must choose creativity in order to transform the world.
While creativity works towards products that exist in the real world and have real-world purpose, the product of the imagination is the “imagined object”; it is the image itself. That image comes with meaning but not necessarily any purpose . The imagination is something that emerges out of creativity. It is precisely because the imagination is given permission to play without any pragmatic intent that it finds connections between things that are not obvious or easy. Let me tell you a story.
The Pacific Power and Light Company – PPL – had problem with ice forming on the electrical wires after snow storms. The ice had to be removed before its weight broke the electrical lines. The manual process of removing the ice was slow, tedious and dangerous. It was dangerous because brown bears were very common in the area and a linesman was their idea of a tasty treat. To brainstorm this problem the company invited a functionally diverse group of employees to a meeting.
So here are the managers and the drivers and the secretaries and the accountants and, of course, the linemen. During a coffee break in the meeting one of the linesmen shared with some of the others the experience of coming face to face with a big, brown bear when he was servicing the power lines. He told his story of how he narrowly escaped being mauled.
A lot of people had heard or heard about the bear story during that break. So when the meeting reconvened someone suggested training the brown bears to climb the poles to shake off the ice from the wires. The bears , it was noted, were strong enough to cause the poles to shake when they climb them. Then someone else then suggested putting honey pots at the top of the poles to entice the bears to climb them. They then started to discuss about how to put the pots of honey at the top of the poles and someone threw out the idea of using helicopters to do the job.
As they were playing with the concept and wondering how many resources it would take to place pots of honey at the top of every electrical pole, a secretary in the meeting pointed out that the downwash from the helicopters could possibly break the ice and blow it off the wires. There was silence. Then the team started to realize that it could work. They tested the idea and it proved to be a good one. Today, all Pacific Power and Light has to do to remove ice from the wires is to charter a helicopter to fly at low altitude above the electrical wires. The downwash from the helicopter does all the work. Linesmen no longer have to risk their lives to climb the electrical poles. And the bears are no longer at risk from frightened linesmen.
Here’s the thing. Imagination finds relationships and linkages that the reasoning mind might never see or it might find unlikely. It is non-linear. Imagination plays with boundaries. It lets thoughts and partial thoughts jump fences. Unleashing human imagination is much more likely in situations where people are in a relaxed state of mind and a comfortable environment. But how did the PP&L people know it was safe to be vulnerable – to risk being laughed at – in that corporate environment? I’m guessing that at some point in all their experiences, they must have gotten to a point where they had learned to transcend discomfort so they could focus on the issue at hand. They were relaxed enough to risk giving voice to their imagination in the process of creating a solution. They trusted each other.
This is what we need to do now. To nurture imagination we need to relax, remember how we transcended discomfort in the past, and trust each other. Imagination is at its brightest and best when we let go of ourselves and enter into a kind of free flow. This free flow will stop the censor of the mind. It will allow new ideas to come forth unhindered by a mind full of expectations about what is and is not possible. The Buddhists call this quieting your monkey mind.
In the world of religion this is called ‘spiritual practice.’ People always ask what that means. The dictionary definitions don’t make much sense to Unitarian Universalists, who have different ideas of what ‘spiritual’ means. Or who reject the idea of spiritual altogether. So my definition of a spiritual practice is any activity undertaken with the intent to take you out of yourself and into the world of that which is not yourself. Another aspect of that definition – should you be so inclined – is that activity which takes you out of yourself with the intent to touch the divine or that which you define as holy.
Reading is a spiritual practice. When I read I conjure up images and smells and sounds made from my own experiences that advance the story in terms I can understand. And if I can’t immediately understand, I can take the time to re-read and try different ways to understand. Writing – that is, journaling – is also a way to relax. Words – your words – are powerful. Your observations, feelings, and ideas are part of you and are made tangible by putting them on paper. Or in the Word document.
I go to theatre and movies to get out of myself and into other peoples’ stories. There’s always something that makes me think differently. A few months ago I saw a play about quantum physics and beekeeping. That unlikely pairing of subjects tweaked my own thinking about linkages and relationships and alternate universes. It resulted in a sermon on quantum entanglement that left the physicists cringing, but unleashed curiosity of the rest of the congregation – even the English majors.
Then there’s art. Not necessarily painting or drawing, but practicing any art form is a spiritual practice that triggers imagination. Some of you paint in various media, some of you do crafts and make fiber art, some of you are musicians who play or sing, and some of you dance. Some of you garden or take photographs. Anything that strengthens your creative muscles is a spiritual practice. This isn’t something you do after everything else is ‘done’. It will be a very long time before everything we Unitarian Universalists need to do is ‘done’. No, art is what you do so you can stay in the doing for the long haul.
So is daydreaming. Your elementary school teacher was wrong when you were told to stop daydreaming and get to work. What I think we all need to do during this hinge time is stop working and start daydreaming. What can we imagine without the fetters of having to produce something – whether it’s breakfast, or a budget or world peace or a community garden?
We Unitarian Universalists are called to use our anxiety to fuel our imaginations and our creativity. Let’s not allow surf torture – the discomfort of this moment – to distract us from the focus on the future. Our grief and anxiety does need expression and it’s always appropriate to articulate these feelings. But even in our distress with our current national malaise, please remember that we have everything you need to go forward: our imaginative and creative selves. We also have a newly articulated set of values to guide us. As we have been guided in the past, may we also be guided into our future. Amen.