We are a people of imagination!
This January we are exploring the theme of imagination in our religious education groups. We’ll be doing things like imagining a world without COVID19 and imagining what it would have been like in the room where it happened in the Civil Rights movement. What can you imagine with your family this month? Check out these options from Soulful Home and find out!
Exploring Imagination at the Table
Family members who are readers can alternate who reads the questions. Those who are not readers are invited to share their own impromptu questions. Discussion partners might answer as thoughts come to them or take turns in a circle.
Discussion Questions
- When you imagine life 100 years from now, what do you see?
- How do you think you are different from what your ancestors imagined you might be?
- When you imagine your best day ever, where do you feel that joy in your body?
- Who is better at imagining, kids, parents or grandparents?
- What’s one thing you can imagine will be different in life after Covid?
- Who is your most imaginative friend?
- Do you have to be either imaginative or realistic? How do those two qualities work together in a person?
- Do you imagine in words, pictures, sounds, or some combination of all your senses?
- Where do you imagine the best? Outdoors? Alone in your room? On walks? In your bed reading? Nighttime?
- When is it sensible to limit one’s imagination?
- What do you imagine it’s like when we die?
- Has something unbelievable ever happened to you, such that afterward you couldn’t tell if it was real or if you imagined it?
- Whose imagination would you love to live in for a day?
Return to the Discussion Throughout the Week
Thoughts develop with time. Find opportunities to bring up particularly compelling questions again during the month, maybe on walks, rides home, when tucking your child in to bed, etc. If thoughts grew or changed, notice together how we are all evolving beings, opening ourselves to new truths and understandings as we live our lives and connect with others.
A Treasure Hunt for Imagination
This month’s searchables are based on idioms of improbability derived from many languages. They are all expressions that indicate something will never happen, or is hard to imagine, even impossible! (When will people stop chit-chatting about the weather? When pigs fly!)
Where will you find these improbable things? We don’t know! But using some creative thinking (imagination’s best friend!) and generous interpretations of your everyday reality, you might have some pretty interesting encounters this month in your neighborhood with…
- A flying pig (Latin)
- Glowing salt (Arabic)
- A crow flying upside down (Malayalam)
- A snowflake in fire (English)
- A horse with horns (Afrikaans)
- A chicken with teeth (French)
- Wind in a net (Japanese)
- A blue moon (English)
- A singing fish (Ukrainian)
Note: Although the expressions above are labeled as coming from different languages, in fact the same idiom might exist in multiple languages, with their origins being unclear. If the idea of language evolution is intriguing to you, watch this TED-Ed video on the origins of English! Sometimes, ideas we imagine to be completely different may actually be close cousins..