“To imagine is not simply to see what does not exist or what one wants to exist. It is also a profound act of creativity to see what is.”
~Susan Griffin

At a writing workshop I took a few weeks ago, the teacher read this quote of Susan Griffin. I jotted it down in a notebook I was using along with several others that needed more pondering time than the class allowed. Yesterday I was reading through my notes from the class and came upon these words again. Their pull for me lies with a long held belief that each of us is born with everything we need to make the life to which we are called. From the time we were placed within our parent’s arms, we were ‘wired’ in particular ways that are unique to us. Anyone who is a parent can attest to raising individual children in the same environment, setting the same boundaries and rules, dishing out an equal amount of love, only to be amazed at how unique and different each child becomes. Many times we can see it from that first glimmer of personality, with the infant’s first cry or smile. Some of us battle at the world with clenched fists while others move through their lives in relative calm and ease. There are certainly environmental factors that come into play, ways we are wounded, ways we come to know success, that add to who we are. But there seems to be, I believe, a uniqueness to each of us that is seeded from our beginnings.

Griffin’s words on imagination captured my attention also because they seem to speak to the juggernaut the political leaders of Minnesota have created for themselves, and thereby, for all of us as our government has shut down. Both ‘sides’, as they want to describe themselves, could use a good dose of imagination to find ways to work together for the common good of all people. The imagination is a powerful thing. It is what helps us create the stories by which we give meaning to our lives. It is the tool that brings about all great inventions and cures. Imagination brings us the gifts of art, music, dance, poetry, film and plays. It also is what helps us dream a future. The imagination is what helps us give language to our experience of the Holy that moves through our lives is ways that are felt but not seen.

In order to bridge this enormous chasm our leaders have created, there is a need to see not only what does exist and what does not exist within each person from diverse viewpoints, but what actually is present within each. Perhaps it is Pollyanna of me to think that each elected leader wants for all children what they want for their own children…. to have adequate food, safe places to live, health care when they need it and schools that will prepare them well for their future. I can’t help but believe that they also want for their own parents what every one else does…..enough resources to live comfortably without fear, the health care they need as they age, safe places in which to live out their final years, neighborhoods in which they feel at home. Each person, no matter what side of the aisle, has within them what they need to come to the table, to employ their imagination, to solve this situation that is causing pain and anguish to so many.

It has been my experience that it is difficult to let one’s imagination work while at the same time clenching fists or shouting loudly. It is also nearly impossible to enter imagination’s playground while holding too tightly to a need to be in control. After all, the gift of imagination is that it takes us places we had not expected, weaving what is visible and invisible, what was and what can be, with all the realities of what already exists. Sometimes, almost always, it begs for compromise, for risk, for compassion, and above all, a deep, deep listening. Listening to others and to the whisper of the Holy breathing through all.

And so, dear leaders of Minnesota, my prayer for you all is the ability to lean, gently lean into the soft body of imagination, to allow the deepest part of you to listen to your brothers and sisters with whom you share this courageous task, to see with the eyes of your heart, not only your children or your parents, but all the young and old ones who are counting on your glorious imagination. And in it all that you may hold tenderly what has been and what is yet to be with the wisdom that was planted within you.

We are all counting on you.