“Moral imagination is the special gift of the prophet and the artist. The artist listens and looks and sees and hears the pain and suffering of the world, and it is from these experiences that the artist creates new images. Without moral imagination there is no compassion, for it is from the ability to picture the suffering of others, that we develop the skill to imagine other ways of living.
Solutions to political problems depend on moral imagination. We find these solutions in the process of being and doing, listening and seeing, with deep sensitivity, to the insights of our imagination. But it is not just artists who exercise their imagination in this way: we are called to sensitize our perceptions so that we come to learn where real suffering and injustice lie.”
-Sister Stan Gardening the Soul. Soothing Seasonal Thoughts for Jaded Modern Souls. The author has an honorary Doctorate of Law from Trinity College, Dublin. She joined the Irish Sisters of Charity in 1958 and develops programs of social service for people in need.
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This wisdom I believe is precisely geared to how to make choices, and how to vote using our moral imagination—not just according to the authority of a political party. It is also how anyone governs, with compassion and respect for the office AND for those you will govern.
Notice that the biblical gospel story for today is that of the blind beggar Bartimaeus (Mark 10: 46-52) who, after he received his sight, did not run off in joy to celebrate like most of the healed do, but stayed to follow Jesus.
Oddly admirable, no?
1 comment:
OMG this is what so often happens to me. I tend to feel like I am loosing my sense of self and entering a whole new place.
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