By Denise Crane

I, like many of you, have been inundated with news summarizing the good and the not good of 2020. As we move into 2021, we all have a choice to make. In America, we continue to be unable to reduce the impact of Covid-19, and our democratic electoral system is under duress. We are as polarized as a country as I have ever seen in my lifetime, which is really the only time I can speak to.

And yet…

To quote Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in possibility.”

What does that mean?

It seems to me that the only thing I can control is how I choose to live and love and be in community with other humans. It would be comforting to have delivered to my inbox every morning a good list of guidelines to follow on how to do that well. And the list of guidelines would need to be as unique to each of us as we are. Likely not a possibility. And yet, the possibilities each of us have need not be as limited as we often think they are. We each have the option to take a stance in the world to expand the possibilities rather than limit them.
What does that mean?

In my opinion, I think the answer to this question resides in how we choose to use our imagination. In centuries long past, there was a concept of epinoia—the divine creative imagination. It was thought that activating our own imagination actually participated in the creative process of the emergence of the universe. What if we dared to believe that? What if we acted as if what we dreamed of or had a vision for is actually what God uses to bring forth new realities? How does that change the questions we ask of our world every day? I think that calls for re-framing our stance. I think it pivots us from asking “why don’t those people do x,y,z?” to “How cool would it be if we all got better at a,b,c?” And then we go out and do our own work at getting better at “a,b,c” and see who God brings alongside.

We each need to find the “a,b,c” that we are called to, given our gifts, our contexts, and our awareness of who the Spirit is putting beside us on the path. That requires that we pay attention to what our gifts are. It requires that we deeply and intently observe and understand our contexts. It requires that we are on high alert to who shows up alongside upon the path. Then the possibilities expand exponentially, and we can, in fact, participate in the emergence of new possibilities.