(10 minutes of writing anything and everything that pops into my head, as long as I keep writing.)
The theme for September is Vision, which means I need to come up with an article about this for the newsletter. No, I don't HAVE to, but it's my goal to do one for each edition of the newsletter this year, as a way to get me thinking and writing on a regular basis.
Vision is one of those topics that people always seem to know about, but not really think about. At least, that's the case for me. What vision? Vision where?
Vision has to do with the future, of course. The congregation needs more than a building in order to continue to grow and thrive. A building is a good first step, insofar as that goes. It's a good first step in the sense that a good portion of the congregation seemed to want to go this direction. But it's not enough.
The theme for the PSD conference coming up is Inspiring the Future We Hope to Live In, which is really long and convoluted, but at least it is inclusive. Inspiring the Future means vision. So this would be an opportunity to begin talking up the conference and the fact that we're hosting it in CR and need people to get involved and put out a call for volunteers.
Don't have much that we need to worry about right at this very second, because it's so far out. We need to secure the venue, confirm the date, and begin organizing. That's about it, but I don't think we need to do a whole lot of work. I could be wrong, of course. I still have to look at the information on the PSD site about this, and start working on that.
Back to vision. Vision is about the future, about planning, about inspiring. It's about seeing, seeing possibility, not just reality. It's about going for what we believe in? What else is vision about? Vision helps us focus on things, because we often see things before noticing them with our other senses. But vision can also be tricked. We can't always trust what we see. How do we keep ourselves open to experience and the hope of the future without leaving ourselves open to deception and disappointment?
As with so many things, there is risk whenever there is something of value involved. Perhaps deception and disappointment are merely the risks that have to be weighed in this venue. I have another three minutes to write, and I have to say that 10 minutes is really hard. I keep, among other things, editing what I'm typing. I don't edit how I'm saying things so much, but I'm editing my spelling, out of habit.
Vision has led to marvelous things. Standing on the Side of Love is the product of someone's vision for a visible symbol and movement that can mobilize in a specific way, to help lead UUs towards acting in tandem with our principles. It has come to life, and because of activity from interested individuals, it's taken on life and vitality. I think those two words mean the same thing.
But here we are with activity. With action. Vision is empty without action. There is nothing that can come when we just gaze into the future. Part of vision is seeing ways to put it into action.
Still a few more seconds to go. What more can I say about vision? Nothing else comes to mind right at the moment and I should hav eturned down my music before I started this. Though I have to admit this track really does drown everything else out, including any and all distractions.
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