By Harry Cummins
I've always viewed reality, of itself, in a somewhat suspicious light.
This pervading notion of the real world, the one cynics and scoffers so readily welcome us to, is made manageable only when first mapped out on the tangents of my own imagination. For me, this is how it works. The same may not be true for you.
It is now my firmly held belief that imagination, this ability to see behind and beyond things, is essential to any sorting out of the truth. In this current climate of pandemic and protest, it has never seemed more important to gain a little more insight into what my place is, what my proper response should be, in this unrecognizable world.
Like lost apples in Eden, it has become painfully apparent that good things no longer grow unspoiled. We must work to clear off the pesticides from a polluted age. In an effort to become authentic human beings, our imaginations are like road maps to these places of restoration not seen with the naked eye. Places reached only thru passion and persistence.
If all this sounds abstract, it is our task to make it specific. What works for me may not work for you. We all have been given a gift by what is happening all around us today. Imagination can form in solitude as well as in collective causes. I am suggesting we all need a passion for those places around us that suggests there is more than meets the eye. More to this life than what we witness on network news.
As a sports writer many years ago, I became friends with John Curry, a British figure skater who later went on to win an Olympic Gold Medal in 1976. In a dinner conversation one night, I remember him saying, "we all need to discover something that burns a hole in the heart."
I believe this is our Great Work, a work in progress if you will, a journey in which we will never arrive and find no other place to go.
The truth about ourselves, if it is ever to be trusted, must be on-going. Our Burning Place often hides..... just out of sight.
hcummins@aol.com
photo: hcummins
