Each year at this festival we:

  CELEBRATE

• the awesome ability we all have to IMAGINE & DREAM

• the power of DREAMS to provide hope and help us make progress, both personally and collectively

  STUDY

• how civil-rights-era leaders created positive changes in society

• how any individual or team can become a better agent of change 

  GROW

• our creative change abilities through the fun challenge of building decorative battery-operated lanterns from recycled materials 

• our appreciation of how festival lanterns and lights are such powerful symbols in many religious traditions

  GATHER

• our little lights on for an evening of lanterns, music, wonder and hot drinks at the community-built Imagine & Dream Lantern Garden in front of our UUFCC building

For 2024 our Themes and Subthemes are:

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Creative Change

the LGBT+ Rights Struggle 

Love & Empathy

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• This year we search for wisdom and inspiration in the 35 year struggle for homosexuality to be considered normal and healthy by the medical establishment.  Starting in 1952, a short paragraph in the American Psychiatric Association's influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders tragically listed homosexuality as a type of mental disturbance.  We examine why this happened and the great injustices it caused; and we celebrate and learn from the inspiring history of how a small number of people overcame powerful biases and entrenched institutional forces to prompt removing homosexuality from the APA’s official list of mental disorders in 1974.  Though this was a pivotal moment, it was not until 1987 that the APA’s DSM fully aligned with the modern scientific consensus that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality.  How that progress was achieved and how it has affected our lives and our society will be the focus of the 'Imagine & Dream - Closer to Free to be LGBT+' worship service and post-discussions to take place on Sunday, February 25, 2024.

• The Imagine & Dream Lantern Festival Evening will be Saturday February 24 (5:30-9:00 pm).  That event will feature Lantern-Making Activities as well as learning and experiential opportunities in two other ways to create positive change in society:

  1. At the Imagine with Beans Potluck Dinner (5:30-6:30 pm) in Fellowship Hall, fellowship members will share how our collective future might be improved by shifting our diets to include more beans and other plant-based protein sources. 

  2. At the Imagine with Drums Drumming Circle (6:45-8:15 pm) in the Sanctuary, fellowship and community members will learn and explore how music can be used to grow and enhance a community.