Sunday Service

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

~ Stephen R. Covey

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat, is, like war, the failure of imagination.

~ Adrienne Rich

I become more and more certain, as the years go by, that wherever friendship is destroyed, or homes are broken, or precious ties are severed, there is a failure of imagination. Someone is too intent on justifying himself, or herself, never venturing out to imagine the way things seem to the other person. Imagination is shut off and sympathy dies. If we know what it is that makes other people speak or act as they do… We might understand. Often we could heal the wounds. But even where that is not possible - even where fuller understanding only leaves us rather sad and helpless, it would still give us the power to be kind.

~ A. Powell Davies

Thinking that we can exponentially grow forever, or even that this is somehow desirable, is a catastrophic failure of imagination, and it’s putting the entire human experiment in jeopardy.

~ Dirk Philipsen

the only war that matters is the war against the imagination. all other wars are subsumed in it. the ultimate famine is the starvation of the imagination. it is death to be sure.

~ Diane di Prima

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination. 

~ David Lynch

It’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. 

~ Frederic Jameson

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Imagination')

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.

~ David Lynch

It’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

~ Frederic Jameson 

The goal of oppressors is to limit your imagination about what is possible without them, so you never imagine more for yourself and the world you live in.

~ Ashley C. Ford

History is birthed out of the imagination. It literally was conjured up. Imagination is so powerful that it could set forth 400, 500 years of something wrong, which means that it very well could set forth 400, 500 years of something right. That’s sort of the beauty of humanity.

~ Jason Reynolds

The imagination plants the inconceivable in our minds and makes our hearts long for it to be true.

~ Hannah Mitchell

Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

~ G. K. Chesterton

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.

~ Francis Bacon

Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing... 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 alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.

~ Walter Brueggemann

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience.

~ Robert Fulghum 

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Imagination’)

April 3, 2025

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on. So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.” 

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions: 

• What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

• How might my inner voice be trying to speak to me through it?

• How might Life or my inner voice be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

1. What is your greatest act of imagination?

2. Has your (or someone else’s) imagination ever led you astray?

3. In your early adult life, who most helped you imagine possibilities of what you could become?

4. Has age widened or narrowed your imagination?

5. Are you someone who imagines everything that can go right or everything that can go wrong? Who in your life balances you out? Have you thanked them for that lately?

6. What “imagined life” for yourself has been with you the longest? Might it be time to act on it or let parts of it go?

7. What’s the most radical thing you can imagine doing before you die?

8. Are you sure it’s not realistic to live that life you keep imagining?

9. What gift did your childhood imaginary friend give you?

10. Is there more to your “enemy” than what you’ve been imagining?

11. What did your greatest failure of imagination teach you?

12. If you could change the way a friend or family member imagines themselves or the world, who would it be and how would you change their imaginings?

13. Are you living out of your imagination or your history?

14. How close is your current life to the life you imagined for yourself in early adulthood? How would that younger self feel about the life you are living now? Surprised? Proud? Confused? Curious?

15. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it. 

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Imagination’)

The Imagined Story That Has Shaped Your Real One

All of us have at least one novel that shaped who we are and how we live our lives. Some piece of fiction that rooted itself in our imaginations and from there wormed its way into our real-life living and loving. So, what book was it for you? Take some time this month to figure out which one impacted you the most. For some it will be a book from our childhood. For others, it might be a book we read as an adult during a difficult time in our lives. Whichever it is, search your imagination (and bookshelves) to find it. If you don’t have the book on your bookshelves, consider going out to buy it. And while you are at it, why not read it again and let it leak into your imagination in a new way?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Imagination')

Ask Them About Imagination

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to help you on your way. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of quizzing them.

Imagination Questions:

● In your early life, who most helped you imagine possibilities of what you could become?

● Are you someone who imagines everything that can go right or everything that can go wrong? Who in your life balances you out?

● Did you have a childhood imaginary friend? What gift did they give you?

● How close is your current life to the life you imagined for yourself in early adulthood? How would that younger self feel about the life you are living now? Surprised? Proud? Confused? Curious?

● If you could have 5 fictional characters as best friends who would they be?

● What is your greatest act of imagination?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Imagination’)

Imagination’s great gift is improvement. At least that is what we’re taught. Its deep magic lies in the way it can reshape our reality. We are urged to imagine the world we dream of. A world with more justice. More peace. More love. From that, a mysterious magnetism arises, a magnetism that pulls our imperfect present into an improved future. Imagination moves us forward. It makes our world - and us - better.

Yet there’s a way in which this view of imagination impoverishes us. It steals the stage and shuts out imagination’s other precious gifts.

For instance, think of what happened when a number of us got out of bed this morning. After a shower, we didn’t just pull on fresh clothes, we likely also pulled out a jewelry box and slipped on our grandmother’s ring. As we slid it on our finger, she slid, not just into our memory, but into our day. Now, because of imagination, we aren’t just elegant; we’re accompanied. Or how about that invisible friend of ours when we were children? Imagination made sure we didn’t travel through those early years alone. It conjured up that loyal friend so we had someone by our side. Even today, amidst the hustle and bustle of adult life, tell me you don’t hear the guidance of ancestors when challenges arise. It’s all one giant reminder that imagination doesn’t just improve our lives, it populates it.

It also illuminates it. That’s right. Imagination isn’t just a force that drives us forward toward a better future, it also pulls the sacred into our impoverished present. Imagination is what transforms trees from potential firewood into wise friends. Imagination is what moves us from lording over the natural word to seeing ourselves as part of it. Or to put it another way, imagination is what gives the world a soul. And not just the natural world, but the ordinary world too. Through the lens of imagination, every day experience becomes precious, even mystical. For instance, the laughter of our children becomes the sound of angels. Sunshine on our face becomes a way that life expresses its love for us. The ocean is able to speak, telling us that we are freer and have more choices than we think. And a simple act of kindness from a stranger shimmers, and through it life says to our burdened heart, “This soon shall pass. Everything will be ok.” Yes, this is what imagination does: it enables us to hear the world speak.

So friends, this month, do everything you can to soak in the many gifts and messages of imagination. It’s not just shouting, “Improve the world!” It’s also pleading, “Let the world come alive!”

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Imagination')