Many years ago the poet Diane di Prima wrote a line that comes back
to me now: 'The only war that counts is the war against the imagination.'
I often wondered what she meant by it, but now I think I understand.
All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit
our dreams and visions, to make us accept within ourselves its terms,
to believe that our only choices are those it lays before us. If we
let the terms of force describe the terrain of our battle, we will lose.
But if we hold to the power of our visions, our heartbeats, our imagination,
we can fight on our own turf, which is the landscape of consciousness.
There, the enemy cannot help but transform."
(the elder Maya, speaking before the
Council, in Starhawk's novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing)
Johanna Stuckey 
