Too often, spiritual imagination takes flight from the world and cannot seem to hold together the realm of being with the realm of doing. I once had a dream that showed me this necessity of holding contradictories without seeking resolution.

In the dream, I was in an interior courtyard. A man had fallen to the ground, suffering from a heart attack. I was attempting to do something by pounding on his chest, trying to resuscitate him. I looked up and saw through a window inside a building where a woman was playing a harp, in a way, not doing anything to be of help. The harpist was looking directly at the stricken man and she was singing.

Nothing in the dream indicated that what the harpist or I was doing was misdirected or in error. Both were needed, and needed at the same time; that is, an imagination that encompasses both is needed. The dream put together these two ways of presence—doing and being—and let them live in what might seem to be an inherent contradiction. However, contradictions are no problem for the imagination and, in fact, imagination thrives in contradictions and creates what is new and unknown from them.

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