The Challenge Before Humanity: Facing the Climate Crisis
Nadine McGuinness, CSJ
Moral Imagination Drives the Creative Process
Reach back into your memory. Remember seeing a doting relative carefully set up a 5-year-old to draw a picture for her. The table and chair are selected. The child is enthroned. Paper and crayons are handed over like soon-to-be tools for providing a treasure which just might be showcased on the refrigerator door. Excitement lights the eyes of both child and relative. Totally engaged, the child puts a mark on the paper. Then another. And his enthusiasm is lit. Suddenly, though, with the 4th or 5th mark, the child frowns, the crayon is dropped, the two little hands reach for the edges of the paper — to tear it up, or crumble it. The picture is ruined. The child might be willing to start over.
What does it take in terms of years before the child comes to imagine that an erring line can be incorporated into something even more interesting than what he had originally imagined? New colors, new types of lines, new expressions of the pride of creatorship is within reach — if he just pauses, looks anew at the started masterpiece which lay there to entice his imagination. Does this type of maturity get invited forth by the child and his doting relative in 6 months? In 2 years? (Read the reflection in its entirety by downloading the PDF below.)
