Sunday Service

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')

We must reclaim joy outside of the artificial "cheer" it is often reduced to. There is a joy that is defiant. A portal to survival for our ancestors. A way to say, we will not be captive to despair nor abandon our belief in beauty. Joy with teeth.

~ Cole Arthur Riley 

It’s easy to believe Joy isn’t strategic when you’ve never had to use it in battle…Joy keeps spirits strong. Joy keeps soldiers marching. Joy sees hope in darkness… Joy makes you keep working for the yes after a million no’s.

~ Brittany Packnett

Joy - flighty, jumpy, startling thing that it is - often finds its true voice within its opposite… as a bright, insistent spasm of defiance within the darkness of the world.

~ Nick Cave

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

~ Jack Gilbert

When we numb out or rush past grief, we also limit our capacity for joy and presence. You can’t selectively numb out one emotion, without compromising your ability to feel another. 

~ Kelly Wendorf

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and, behold, service was joy.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

We’re a nation hungry for more joy: Because we’re starving from a lack of gratitude.

~ Brené Brown

The high value put upon every minute of time, the idea of hurry-hurry as the most important objective of living, is unquestionably the most dangerous enemy of joy

~ Herman Hesse

when I'm sitting in my favorite rocking chair…

I feel so content with the way

my feet push off gently against the wooden floor…

that I just have to sigh

with the sheer delight of knowing

that everything I want

is everything I have.

~ Leslea Newman

I watched her cooking, from my chair…

"It's ready now. Come on," she said…

We ate, and talked, and went to bed,

And slept. It was a miracle.

~ Donald Hall

We’re only here for a minute. We’re here for a little window. And to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story.

~ Brian Doyle

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

Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness... And when the war within rages, as it does in every life, the practice of joy, the courage of joy, becomes our mightiest frontier of resistance.

~ Maria Popova

I don’t think anyone “finds” joy. Rather, we cultivate it by searching for the preciousness of small things, the ordinary miracles that strengthen our hearts so we can keep them open to what is difficult. 

~ Dawna Markova

What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point: what if joy is not only entangled with pain, suffering or sorrow, but it's also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things? What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?

~ Ross Gay

There's joy to be found in how people manage to survive.

~ Britney Luse

A person will be called to account on judgment day for every permissible thing they might have enjoyed but did not.

~The Talmud

Happiness is attached to things being a certain way. But joy is about the bliss of being. It transcends highs and lows.

~ Martha Beck 

The high value put upon every minute of time, the idea of hurry-hurry as the most important objective of living, is unquestionably the most dangerous enemy of joy 

~ Herman Hesse

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

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 were you first taught about “deserving joy”?

2. Did you grow up in a “happy family”?

3. What simple joy rescues you over and over again? (What might you do to make a little bit more room for it in your life?)

4. Are you mostly a creator of joy, receiver of joy, notice-er of joy or spreader of joy?

5. If you could magically give a joy-filled and sorrowless week to one of your friends, family members or co-workers in the coming year, who would you choose and why?

6. Have you been hesitant or scared to ask for the thing you know will bring you joy?

7. When was the last time you sought out joy for your body?

8. Has choosing joy ever been an act of survival for you? Or an act of defiance?

9. Are you too responsible to let joy in?

10. What is one of your favorite/best moments of bringing joy to someone else?

11. Has joy ever asked something big of you? Might it be asking that now?

12. When was the last time you told your partner that they delight you?

13. 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 ‘Trust’)