…per Pastor Jamili Omar (on June 18, 2023)…

The below text is at 38:45 of Jamili’s sermon on “Stuck: Creativity and Change” …

I want to ask you…

• If you could dream the world into being…
  • what would you dream?
  • what would you imagine for us?
  • for our world?

Dreams are important.

• Dreams help us envision what is next.
• Without dreams
  • we cannot move forward.

Every change, every adaptation, every development we’ve ever gone through

• is because
  • someone first dreamed it
  • Somebody imagined it
    • They thought this can be done a different way.

Last week, Bo so expertly talked to us — about imagination and creativity in making art.

And, I want to say

• that same process he talked about
  • also applies
    • to making a more just and peaceful world.
      • Right?

He said

• “We need to have
  • the desire,
    • the intention,
      • and the will
        • to be creative.”
• “We need to have
  • thinking about it,
    • imagining it,
      • dreaming it.”
• “And, then
  • we need to take action.”
• He actually said to us…
  • “Put your body in the place
    • where you can make that thing happen.”

Sounds like social justice, to me — making a just world.

And, I think…

• our repeated invocation of the term “Beloved Community”
  • is one of the ways
    • that we UUs try to bring this imagination together.

“The Beloved Community” — in my understanding — is another metaphor…

• for a world where justice is
  • in all human relations
  • in relations with each other
  • in relations with the non-humans we share the planet with
  • and with our own selves.

“Beloved Community”