Dreams are a funny thing. We sometimes use phrases like “dream job” or “dream vacation” or “dream home” to mean the best possible job (vacation, home) you could imagine, the one you’d have in the surreal world of dreams, in which there are no practical limits on our subconscious imaginings. But not all dreams are good. If you asked me what my dream job is and I answered honestly, it would be something like: Most of the time, my “dream job” is that I’m the Rector of St. John’s, and it’s Sunday morning, and I’m in the pulpit, and I look down and realize that not only have I not written a sermon, I don’t even know what the readings were, I’ve forgotten to vest, and I’m wearing sweaty running clothes from earlier in the morning.
Not all dreams, after all, are particularly good. (And stress dreams can be particularly bizarre; I know a forty-something lawyer who still dreams regularly about forgetting his middle-school locker combination.)
As we kick off our “program year” with the return of the choir and children’s formation this Sunday, I’m going to invite you to participate in a little exercise during Coffee Hour. We’ll have a table set up with pens and pencils and index cards, and the question: “What is your dream for the year ahead?” You can write (or draw!) your dream, and then leave it one of a few jars:
- Dreams for my life or my family
- Dreams for our building
- Dreams for our congregation
- Dreams for our community
- Dreams for the world
It’s easy in life, and perhaps especially in parish life, to become stuck in the routines of quotidian reality. It’s simpler to focus on technical problems (Who’s arranging flowers for Sunday? Who’s organizing the Fair?) than to wonder about the bigger possibilities. But dreams are surreal. Dreams escape all technical limitations. Dreams allow us to imagine another world, without wondering how to get there.
Maybe your dreams for this year are happy ones, daydreams: reconciliation with an estranged sibling, a bell that rings on Sundays, a new way of serving our neighbors, and end to war. Or maybe they’re stress dreams; maybe nightmares!
In any case, I hope you’ll think about them, and—if you’d like—talk about them with one another. It’s not a task, or a to-do. It’s just a “journey into imagination” (without the airfare to Epcot!)
I hope to see you Sunday, and to hear some of what’s on your minds this year!
Sweet dreams,
Greg