Dreams.  A lot of the talk between my friends these past few weeks has focused on our dreams.  What is it that makes us wish and hope?  What do we want faith for?  In an ideal world, what callings of our hearts would we pursue?

So much about life has to do with getting by.  Managing.  Doing whatever is necessary to make it from one day to the next with warm enough clothes, food in our bellies, and hopefully spare change in the bottom of our pockets.  We center our lives around not what is best or what is most desperately wanted but simply what is necessary to get by.

Likewise my friends and I find that our spiritual lives have ended up much the same way.  We seek out not what we are praying for, but simply what is necessary to keep the fires burning and the hearth safe.  We don’t pursue our own ministries, but instead fill the holes that need filling to keep the machine running.  Secretly we wonder what would happen if everyone pulled out and pursued their own visions.

Collapse.

We know it, we just don’t say it.  And somewhere in the backs of our minds lays the question, “do we really need each other so badly that self has to be sacrificed every time?”  A question not to be said out loud, because Christ sacrificed his self and we feel obligated.  Not just obligated, called.  Called to each other.

And in that reality is the death of many dreams.  Dreams who have languished for so long that we are no longer familiar with each other.  Someone asks, “what is your dream?” and we fumble for the words.  We sigh and smile at not our dream itself but the thought of a dream, the thought of having something to wish for, the thought that maybe there are still fairy godmothers who will rescue us in the eleventh hour.

A wise man says, “start putting aside seed for your dreams now, so they can be harvested in your lifetime.”

I have no seed, just words.

So I set aside words.  Words not for the dream, but for the hope of the dream.  Words so that perhaps one day I will be brave enough to dream again.

The good Book says, “the Kingdom of God is forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.”

Ah, I am a woman.  Perhaps that is my problem.