Summoning The Courage To Live Out Of Imagination

There is an understanding of courage that dominates the perception of society. It is the image of the athlete and the soldier. It assumes that the heights of courage are reached when physical comfort is traded for some form of glory through pain. When the body is uncompromised by its adversary and perseveres toward its end goal. Through repetition and discipline, the objects of veneration for physical courage train their bodies for automation and precision.

We call it toughness. We call it strength. We call it courage.

It’s important to recognize the prevalence of this form of courage when we consider the social challenges we face in this moment, and our failure to adequately address them. When we summon one another to courage for this social moment, we tend to respond with lessons drawn from this physical form of courage.

We suffer the pain of isolation and division for the glory of winning the political battle. We trade exhaustion for uncompromising performance. We create spaces where “iron sharpens iron” and warriors are made. We entertain ourselves through tales of fighters-become-machines and competitors-become-beasts. The heroes of our popular mythology are those who shed their human vulnerability to become unstoppable forces.

But this form of courage is not capable of generating the new social reality for which we long. It is too reductive, turning us into tools of leverage, tactics, and logistics. Its creativity is stunted by the bounds of pre-determined goals; dominate the competition, vanquish the enemy.

There is another, more powerful and creative form of courage. It is the courage to live out of our moral imagination. The courage to allow moral creativity to reform and recreate the contours of social geography. To transform adversaries into kin. To walk away from the shallow promises of win-win, and into the deep hope of co-creation. Moral courage is that which generates enough love to include all that is, and to create beyond the bounds of what has been, surging toward what could be.

This form is truer to the French roots of the word courage: coeur, meaning heart. When courage is based in the physical body, it is limited by physical boundaries of the universe, and can only manipulate that which already exists. But when courage is based in the heart, the word we’ve given to represent the seat of generative love, it can add to the fabric of space and time, creating more than previously existed. Physical courage is characterized at its edges by scarcity; moral courage by abundance.

Moral courage is more difficult to develop than physical courage, but far stronger in its capacity. Physical courage relies on intimidation and fear through brute force to achieve a circumstance; but only achieves some kind of peace by postponing the current confrontation until the wounded have grown strong again. Physical courage will not transform the social order into one of mutuality and lasting peace. But moral courage insists upon transformation of relationship, thereby activating our shared imagination. Violence already exists in the broken society; peace must be created through the activation of our moral imagination.

To access this courage, we must learn to flex a different kind of muscle. In order to co-create the new society we crave, we must become more imaginative. Like physical courage, the capacity for moral courage is built up through repetition and discipline. But unlike physical courage, repetition and discipline in practicing moral courage results not in automation and precision, but in resilience and creativity.

Resilience from practicing moral courage is the source of faithfulness to one’s integrity and the integrity of all others. It is how one’s moral compass returns to true north even when despair sweeps in like a hurricane. It is how one can remain imaginative in the face of social disintegration.

Creativity from practicing moral courage is the faithfulness to imagine what might be even as what is threatens to undo us. It is the contemplative home of both the broken and hopeful heart. It is the catalyst for social transformation. 

Knowing this, it becomes apparent why so many in power over our society not only fail to lead us to a more peaceful co-existence, but worsen our battles. They are drunk on the vanishing milk of courage based on domination and control. Their resources for change are scarce, and their imaginations bounded by what has been. They are automated to create violent systems with ever more precise applications.

But focusing on their hopelessness is not our work. Our work is to activate our moral courage in the spaces in which we live. To imagine what might be, and then to live out of that imagination. To call upon the infinite resources of the generative heart in order to overcome the physical scarcity that binds so many of us. Our work is to unleash wild flights of imagination for the purpose of conjuring wholeness. To call into being the shared will to work for the previously unimaginable and to ground ourselves in the deep abundance of creative love.

What possibility has remained unimaginable for you? What kind of courage do you find yourself drawing upon? Where do you need to imagine abundance?