The theme of April’s Soul Matters’ materials is Creation, and the overarching question is, “What Does It Mean To Be a People of Creation?”. The packet opens with a two-part quote from Peggy Taylor: “Creativity is simply our ability to dream things up and make them happen.” Creativity begins with the imagination and finding new connections and arrangements, bringing things and insights and life together in ways you haven’t seen before; not necessarily ways that haven’t been seen before, but that you haven’t seen before. We are all creative. It’s part of being awake and alive. It’s the freedom of thinking (being and living) outside the box (if only for a moment). Unitarian Universalist theologian, Henry Nelson Weiman wrote “Humanity is not without hope because there is creativity at work within each person that is greater than oneself.”
And the second part of the two- part quote? “Our ability… [to] make them happen.” That says we can; “our ability” and then says we have to follow through to actually create and make the dream real. “Yes, creation requires the ability to imagine the “not yet,” [and] it also requires the courage to live into it.” Creativity not only requires courage and heart, it is our felt embodiment of the energy of being alive.
So “What does it mean to be a people of creation?” It does not say “a person of creation” as in you must do this all by yourself. It says “people of creation” as in a community of companions that help make a full, creative life possible and real. I might then go a little farther and add “a people for creation.” Lets think of making the vision of creation real for our lives and our world and for the earth. Embodied. Together we have the courage and the ability to keep heart.
Last Sunday I shared how I never got it together to install solar panels on my house, but with the community of this congregation—we people of and for creation— the dream of being an important part of a solar installation that makes a difference happened. Each and every one of us should say in our out loud voice, “I’m creative.” It’s very real. Earth Day is everyday. The sun is up. The power of, and for, creation is on!
Rev. Jim McKinley, UUFH Minister