FORGETTING HOW TO DREAM

A friend of mine in Pennsylvania was sort of a recluse. He wandered in and out of his small apartment mostly to the grocery store, sometimes to church and, when he could not avoid it any longer because of his health, to the doctor. He spent much of his time thinking and writing, mostly poetry. On occasion I was a recipient of some of his poems. They come typed – typed, not computer-generated. He did not own one because he could not afford one.

David, as with all poets, lived in his own world, but he also had a way of seeing into our world and seeing what we sometimes cannot and often will not see. That’s the upside of poetry. The downside is that sometimes the words poets employ are so obtuse that even if we want to see with their eyes, we cannot because we cannot go where they are. Their words seem to block the path. But not always.

A while back David sent me a letter to which he added a page containing four short poems. One was titled simply, “Journal Entry”.  He writes: “Vision and dollars are in conflict: / When there are lots of dollars, / There is no vision; / When there are no dollars / There is lots of vision.”

That I can understand. It may have taken David’s poetry to paint the picture, but at least this time the words don’t obfuscate his meaning. He cannot be clearer can he? When one’s financial resources are slim, who does not dream about what life would be like if one only had a little more money? There is no telling what s/he would do, what deeds s/he would accomplish! On the other hand, when financial resources are abundant, one does not need to dream of what might be because one can have whatever one wants and have it right now. 

That is not to say that it is only the financially strapped who dream of what might be. Nor is it to say that the Bill Gates’ of this world live in and think about only the present. While David’s words may be a slight exaggeration of reality, sadly he was still not far off the mark. What is even sadder is when we have forgotten how to dream. The church, sadly, is all too often a vivid example of that.

Churches always seem to be one lost pledge away from debt, if they are not already there. Budgets are bare boned. There is no fluff. We want to dream of what we could be if we only had more people and more dollars, what it would be like if we had an unlimited source of funds. But we do not dream because we seem to have forgotten how.

What if, for instance -- to dream the impossible dream -- every person suddenly tithed, even half-tithed, gave 5%? Would we have even the foggiest vision of what to do with those financial resources? When dollars are scarce, we do not dream about what could be, should be, because we have forgotten how to dream. Might it be that dollars are scarce precisely because we do not have a vision of what can – and should – be? Perhaps we need to learn how to dream again. For when we do, not even the sky will be the limit and no dream will be impossible.