"To Dream the Impossible Dream"
We recently lost an impossibly creative Dreamer, my own beloved family, Bert, who died January 17. Bert was a Quixotic champion of justice, tilting at windmills and transforming the world through Love of what could be - his impossible dreams. An amiable Buddha, a mystical and subversive poet, a fiercely loyal friend, mentor, and a gentle planetary pilgrim, Bert lit the way for countless companions struggling to find a path forward. And like another famous Albert, he knew the value of imagination: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." (Albert Einstein, Covici-Friede, Inc. Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 1931)
When Bert encountered someone drowning in self-absorption, teetering on the brink of despair, or trembling with fear of the unknown, he would call it a "crisis of imagination." He recognized inertia or stagnation as a tethering of the soul to an old way of thinking or being, devotion to an ancient narrative or worn-out metaphor that no longer served. He would invite those paralyzed with apathy or intransigence to a paradigm shift, to listen with the inner Ear, to see with Beginner's Eye. The invitation was to dream BIG, not just to broaden our vision, but break out of our myopic vision, lean boldly into what could be - so as to ignite the imagination beyond whatever terrifying dragon or imposing mountain we were facing.
Isaiah the prophet might say, "Behold, I am doing something NEW! Do you not perceive it?" Jesus might say, "New wineskins for new wine." Rumi might say, "Love and imagination are magicians Who create an image of the Beloved in your mind." Whatever way we want to put it, if we're going to move forward, if we're going to co-create a new reality and BE the change, we need a fertile imagination to open a window into a new universe.
Today, we are facing unprecedented geopolitical and planetary crises - none more devastating than the crisis of our impotent imagination. What we are facing as a global community is not primarily about problem-solving so much as it is about our inability to imagine possibilities beyond the confines of our narrowly delineated paradigms for meaning and existence. It is about imagining what life, love, goodness, beauty, truth, and justice could be if we were not limited by inherited presuppositions. Imaginative potency empowers the capacities of our collective identity, and our ability to foster our connection with a much wider "WE."
If we can no longer connect with the depths of our imagination, we invite disaster for those out on the edges, for the pioneers and the visionaries, the prophets and mystics. For evolutionary thinkers, inventors, artists, poets, philosophers and explorers to do what we do, we have to have access to creative canvases that stretch beyond the black holes of certitude and censorship. We must be able to immerse ourselves in deep pools of wonder, awe, and ineffable Mystery that sent us into paroxysms of joy, spirals of creative energy and limitless imaginative flow as children. Otherwise, we miss the opportunity to imagine a future beyond our broken systems of domination. We repeat endlessly the hackneyed dualisms and battle paradigms, and espouse a teleology of utter destruction of the whole in favor of a few despotic megalomaniacs who require the tyranny of the status quo to maintain their delusory stranglehold of power.
We need impossibly BIG dreams to move beyond the morass of despair and inertia that is stifling our collective imagination. We need new parables, new utopias, new heavens and new earths. We need a new species of Buddha's bo tree and a new Way of self-giving Love. We need a new iteration of Huxley's Island. We need a new anthem of Lennon's "Imagine," or a new dance from Kazantzakis' Zorba. We need a new round table for Arthur's Camelot. We need a wildly earthy reincarnation of Dr. King's Dream. We need Teilhard's "Cosmogenesis" to reinvent the flame, and E.O. Wilson's "Half-Earth" to re-wild the biosphere - along with our own tepid Soul. We need Einstein's imagination to light the entire world. We need Bert's wide umbrella of compassion for all, and Don Quixote's impossible dreams to help us transfigure Aldonza into Dulcinea. We need the energies of Love/Imagination to invent new Fire. We need to dream BIG.
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