Sunburnt Speculations

And thinking again with the heart – an Australian point of view

Not a writing exercise this time; but a reflection on reclaiming moral imagination – something that is drawing my attention as I read Vigen Guroian’s “Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination” (1998)

In Australia, we say someone is “a wake-up to something” when they’re sharp enough to see through a trick, astute enough not to be taken for a ride. Nobody wants to be a drongo — slow on the uptake, dull, blind to what’s happening around them. In our vernacular, being a wake up is a compliment. It’s an egalitarian virtue: the sociology professor and the shearer can both be a wake-up to the same thing — though they may reach that happy state by different paths — and both deserve respect for it.

To sneer at people for being awake to injustice is to sneer at the very capacity that keeps us human — the capacity to think with the heart. This is the ground of our national moral imagination, and it sits deep in our tradition of giving everyone a fair go.

The language of “woke,” though imported and weaponised, has a scriptural resonance when heard through our own idiom. To be woke or to be a wake up is to have eyes that see and ears that hear. It is to resist the stiffness of neck and hardness of heart that impair our ability to perceive truth and to extend compassion. It is to arise from the dull sleep of the soul in which justice falters, mercy withers, and humility gives way to the closed-hearted ignorance of our own pride.

The language of woke calls us toward the turning point of repentance. I am coming to see that John’s baptism was not about rehearsing guilt but about waking up — shedding the old hardness, loosening the stiff neck, opening the closed heart. Repentance is the recovery of sight and hearing, and of a neck that bends.

When we repent, we regain the capacity to think with the heart. And thinking with the heart, we rediscover what it is that may be within the imagination of God: to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly. This is the way made straight — a people awake to the cries of the world, alert to deceit, alive to compassion, and willing to walk in the humility of an open heart.

Perhaps it is the wake-up call we need right now.