Welcome to the Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation

Reflections from the Rev. Meg Riley, Director of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Advocacy and Witness Programs, and former Director of the UUA Washington Office.

And so I awaken on this Inauguration Day, my heart as bleak as today’s grey Minnesota sky. Thankfully my eight year old daughter inhabits a different bit of reality, which is leaping for joy about today’s school agenda—Snow Olympics. She scampers and squeals as she gets dressed, and I am grateful to have her energy to contrast to my own, which is almost two-dimensional in its flatness.

Unitarian Universalism is a good fit for me, in part, because I am an optimist by nature. I experience moments of cynicism, despair, and hopelessness, but my spirit is a buoyant one. But, today, I am bleak, and I notice this in my morning meditation.

I am bleak because I know how much of the work which is central to UU values will be harder in these next years. Some things we’re constantly defending: Women’s reproductive choice. Marriage equality. The United Nations. Civil and religious liberties. Child care funding. Some things we’re constantly trying to stop: School prayer. Government funding of religion. Preemptive wars. Regardless of who is President, prophetic religion is a tough sell in the nation’s capital, and these struggles have been ceaseless since I woke up as an activist nearly thirty years ago. Power, as Frederick Douglas wrote a hundred fifty years ago, never concedes anything without a struggle—it never did and it never will. But our work gets even harder, as the Religious Right demands more and more from elected officials, and I know the years coming will challenge us deeply.

Part of me, I notice in meditation, is drawn to the odd seduction of hopelessness, wants to relax into its arms, throw the oars off my little rowboat and drift slowly out into the vast foggy sea. But then another voice speaks, waking me up. ”Imagination is a moral imperative,” it says, in the sharp tone in which a parent might say for the third time, “Hang up your coat NOW.”

I consider this. I am privileged to live a life where I get to use my imagination and all of my other gifts every day at work. The UUA’s advocacy work and public witness work, putting our UU values out into the world, reaches out to the broadest swath of souls we can conceive to promote the principles by which we live—justice, equity, compassion, peace, liberty, interdependence. This is by nature creative work. Most of the time, we at the UUA work with one another joyfully, with much laughing and energy, which flourishes because of our deep respect for one anothers’ work and knowledge that we can trust another. This is, indeed, privilege.

But, imagination as moral imperative. Moral imperative? I remember this language from old ethics classes but I’m not even sure what it means exactly. To be a moral person, I MUST imagine? Another familiar line comes into my mind, from Adrienne Rich’s stunning journal, What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. One of my desert island books, where I’ve turned over and over for help. “Despair,” she wrote in 1991, “when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat, is, like war, the failure of imagination.”

War as the failure of imagination? This makes total sense to me. I once went to a high school and watched a series of student-written plays. The teachers had provided boxes of props to inspire them; one class had been allowed to use the prop of a gun if they wanted. The other had not. In the class which had been allowed to use the gun, every single play, probably six of them, concluded with someone being shot. It almost became comical, how that gun defined the limits of adolescent imagination, in plays which otherwise bore no resemblance to each other. In the class without a gun, the endings were much more varied and interesting. This was not a sociological experiment, simply class plays, and no one but me even seemed interested in what that gun did to youth’s imaginations. But I was awed by it. Multiply a gun into an army, and I can certainly see the epic crumbling of imagination. So this makes total sense.

Despair as failure of imagination makes sense to me, too, on an intuitive level. I remember a parent orientation at my daughter’s preschool five years ago. The teacher, who had run the place for over 30 years, told us that they tried to stay out of the kids’ ways as much as possible and let them have about two hours uninterrupted free play each day. One anxious parent raised his hand. “But if they run out of ideas about what to play,” he said, “You jump in and help them think of some, right?” I immediately chuckled, expecting the teacher to brush away this absurd question. My own daughter and every other three year old kid I’d ever known in my life as a teacher and religious educator, wouldn’t run out of ideas if we never spoke to them again! But the veteran teacher responded soberly. “We are seeing a new phenomenon these past few years,” she said, “Where kids actually ARE unable to think of things to play.” She went on,”We link it to the absence of unstructured time in children’s lives, and to excessive amounts of time watching television.”

To hear about the demise of children’s imaginations ranked, for me, with hearing about the demise of the virgin forests. Something completely irreplaceable and precious is being lost. I have to wonder how this is connected to the increasing numbers of children who are being medicated for depression and anxiety and aggression and other mental health problems. As ever, the children are the canaries in our coal mines.

So, my prayer for each of us on this Inauguration Day is that we seriously consider how to yoke our imaginations to the common good—to commit ourselves to keeping hope alive. Though there are certain activities which I believe all citizens should participate in, such as being in relationship with elected officials about our values and opinions, activism does not need to be formulaic or follow one way. On this Inauguration Day, I challenge you to dedicate yourself to finding a way to put something creative out into the world, whether it’s learning Thai cooking or mentoring a child or painting or writing or creatively protesting injustice. Take seriously that you need to be alive, to be rowing your own little boat, not to be surrendering the most precious gifts you have been given—your heart’s desires, your soul’s longing for connection, your abilities to manifest the vision of life that is uniquely yours. No one can take that from you unless you give it to them. This Inauguration Day, hold tightly to this birthright, and pledge to dedicate your life to it.

May it be so!