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These aren’t day dreams. These are life dreams.
These are kingdom dreams, God-sized dreams.
Sleeping dreams are weird – like a trip with Alice down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass. They are the result of a swirling mix of your subconscious mind, your anxieties, and whatever you had for dinner. Like I said, WEIRD. They may be scary, or fun, sad, heartwarming or erotic. More often than not, they seem completely detached from reality.
And yet how often do we let them control our reality? How often do we shy away from a challenge because of some nightmare of the danger or risks involved? How often do we pursue a path of unhealthy self-gratification or self-glorification that originated in a dream state? We consume stories in prose and poetry, songs, TV and movies – some of which create a very literal interpretation of these dreamlike experiences – I’m thinking of The Matrix series and Inception. You may know of others that like an MC Escher print fold dimensions inside each other as though each of us were a series of interlocking Mobius strips.
The 2013 holiday release of the new Kristen Wiig and Ben Stiller movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” – a remake of the 1947 film starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo – is based on the James Grover Thurber (1894-1961) story from The New Yorker magazine. Mitty is a character who lives in his imagination, with his real life bearing no resemblance to his dreams. Eventually he awakes to this situation, and makes a conscious decision to go and do something else, to Wake up and dream.
Thurber is reported to have said, “Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” So many of our dreams have us looking in anger or fear.
God’s dreams for us begin with our waking to what is real, right here and now, in our very midst. God with us, Emmanuel. God here in the sorrow and struggle, the laughter and love. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God’s thoughts toward God’s people are of blessing, and a future with hope. (Jer 29:11) God’s dream is to restore that which has been lost, or that which we only glimpse “as through a veil dimly.” (1Cor 13:12)
The first and last scenes of the Bible are of a beautiful garden in which human beings are in harmony with one another, they undertake meaningful creative work caring for the world as a central feature of their blessed state, and they are in communion with God who dwells and walks among them. Their home is God’s home. This is the vision, the dream which God is continually dreaming for us and working with us to unfold in and through us.
“And they called him Emmanuel, God with us.”
Most often the Bible uses the word wake with reference to calling people to pay attention to what is happening around them, to shake off the stupor of their sinful and slothful ways. Shake off the haze of the culture which invites you to deny the reality of God and the spiritual world, and even your own spirit. Shake off the sleep that lulls you into believing either that you are the only thing that matters, or that you do not matter at all.
The sojourners from the east came, wise and wealthy – and thereby powerful – yet they humbled themselves before the child Jesus. Shepherds, the least and lowest, the most despised among Jewish society, found themselves with personal engraved invitations to the party of the ages. The “reality” in both situations would have told them to stay away – one because they were too good, and the other because they were not good enough. Yet through dreams and visions they all came to realize that the invitation was for them, and for everyone – “Peace on earth, good will to all.”
What will your dreams reveal, when you begin to let yourself dream them? What is God longing to show you? What is being prepared for you to be and do in the world so that others might experience Emmanuel? Whether you’re a shepherd, a wiseman, an innkeeper, a carpenter, or a young and innocent woman, you have a role to play in the unfolding drama of God’s dream. Will you open to it?
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These reflections were written in preparation for a sermon on 12/29/2013, first Sunday after Christmas. The sermon scriptures were:
Isaiah 52:7-10 ~ Psalm 98 ~ Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12) ~ John 1:1-14
Download Discerning, choosing and acting with limited information and limited control
We often are faced with situations in life where we feel a need to choose and act without all the information and answers, and where various elements are beyond our control. At the same time, we do not want to be reactive or reactionary. We believe faithful and fruitful require us to consider, pray, reflect, discuss, discern, choose and act as best we can, individually and collectively, “trusting God with the rest” whatever that may mean. One way of building our capacity for this discernment work is through the Ignatian Prayer of Imagination. In this prayer method, we hear a biblical story and place ourselves within it, thinking, feeling, sensing, and experiencing it. Most often Ignatius invites us to pray with stories of Jesus acting in the world. At other times we are with Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, and the disciples, as they respond with a Yes to God’s call on their lives. We can also learn from those in the Hebrew Scriptures who were called to make choices in the world and trust God along the way. Following are some scripture passages with which to practice this form of prayer. You might use them, one each day, Monday through Friday, or take several days to hear, experience and discern the wisdom in a particular text for you. You may also select texts of your own choosing – keeping in mind that this form of prayer is more effective when used with stories than with lessons, teachings, rules or theological discourses. Other resources may be found at: http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/; http://wau.org/resources/article/re_use_your_imagination/; http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Imagination/Intro.html . For more reflection on Choosing and Discernment, see Joseph A. Tetlow, SJ, beginning with this prayer: http://predmore.blogspot.com/2012/07/prayer-joseph-tetlow-choosing-christ-in.html
A Week of Abraham and Sarah
Abram is called to Journey – Genesis 12:1-9
Abram, Sarai and Pharaoh – Genesis 12:10-20
Abram, Sarai and Hagar – Genesis 16
Abraham, Sarah & three visitors – Genesis 18:1-15
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar & Ismael – Genesis 21: 1-21
A Week of Moses
Birth and childhood of Moses – Exodus 2:1-10
Moses – Prince of Egypt – Exodus 2: 11-15
Moses from prince to shepherd – Exodus 2: 16-25
Call of Moses – Exodus 3:1-14
Moses negotiates with God – Exodus 4
A Week of Exodus
Israelites at the Red Sea – Exodus 14
The Israelites Thirst – Exodus 15:22-27; 17:1-7
The Israelites Hunger – Exodus 16
Israel measures the challenge – Numbers 13
Israel rejects God’s invitation – Numbers 14
A Week of Women
Tamar – Genesis 38
Deborah – Judges 4
Ruth – Ruth 1
Esther – Esther 4
Judith – Judith 8
“The Kingdom of God is among you,” said Jesus to the Pharisees when they asked when this supposed kingdom of which he spoke would come (Luke 17:21 [NRSV]). It is interesting that in this encounter Jesus says that the kingdom is not coming with things that can “be observed” – paratērēseōs (Englishman’s Greek Concordance on http://www.bible.cc). A brief word study reveals that only Luke uses this word, and its close cognates are used by him in describing the Pharisees “watching closely” to try to catch Jesus in something with which they can entrap and destroy him. They are looking for some big sign that Jesus is trying to overtly conquer and supplant the existing system of empire (political and religious) by force. Jesus makes the point here in Luke 17:20-21 that such will not be the case. Indeed, it is the very opposite. The kingdom is already here, in the very midst of empire. It is like a mustard seed and the shrub it produces, like the yeast in a batch of dough (Luke 13:18-20). In other words, the reign of God is something that arises unnoticed, right under your nose, and even the most watchful of adversaries cannot defeat it. Such is my experience of the New Day community at Amani House (Missional Wisdom).
My arrival at Amani house on a Sunday evening to share in the community celebration was preceded by a visit there led by Dr. Elaine Heath as part of the Perkins School of Theology at SMU Doctor of Ministry course “Evangelism and Discipleship for a Missional Church” which she led along with Rev. Wes Magruder. That earlier session introduced the location, some key leadership, and the general format of a New Day gathering. While the Sunday evening hospitality was warm and inviting, I imagine that my experience then was colored by the preceding orientation. Familiarity helped me to relax more than I otherwise might, and being known and recognized by some of the leaders added to my comfort and sense of belonging. Though I was aware that this was not my community, I nonetheless felt welcomed by them. This familiarity may also have given them some freedom to spend less energy and attention on me than if I were completely new.
Lastly and most personally, I tend to make myself at home wherever I am, even when I am a stranger in a strange land. This temperament has served me well, I think, in cross cultural settings because I have felt free to let down my guard. A risk is that I might assume a less formal interaction in new relationships than is customary in other cultures. I wonder how much of this comes to me by virtue of being a straight, white, middle class, Protestant male. As a member of the most privileged group in our culture, I have had the least need to overcome obstacles to opportunity. I was formed in settings where I was a member of the host group, which I think leads to a presumption of belonging and familiarity that may be false, particularly in settings like the one where Amani House is being formed – in a community largely of African refugees.
This turning of the tables was one of the greatest gifts of my experience – to receive the hospitality of those who were actively seeking to make a home in this new land – a true parable of the Kingdom of God. The last become first, the first last, the servant becomes the host and the host becomes the guest. This illustrates the way Sarah Miles writes in Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead about her encounters with the vulnerable and marginalized (Miles 2010, 3). She is challenged by her own presumptions, and finds herself guilty of judging others though she herself has been an object of scorn (Miles 2010, 36-37). It is the encounter with others in surprising ways that prompts a new awareness of the deep humanity present in each person, a humanity that cradles the image of God. It is the recognition of this humanity and a growing love for it that finally leads us to transformation. We discover that the other has become us, and we have become the other, that truly Jesus creates “in himself one new humanity in place of the two” (Ephesians 2:15). I love how Miles frames Jesus’ formation of community as the means to eternity:
When Jesus enters into relationship with outcasts and shares their social death, he starts a process of resurrection. The unclean become full, living people, born again. They are reincorporated – that is, re-bodied – into the community. And the community is healed into wholeness from separation, made new.” (Miles 2010, 15)
One of the striking experiences of this visit related to food. Earlier that day my home congregation had a fellowship covered dish dinner where individuals and families bring a dish, or two, as they are able. For the fifty people in attendance, we probably had six meat dishes, eight casseroles, six salads and twelve deserts. There was enough food for each person to fill their plate three times over. By contrast, a simple, wonderfully nutritious and flavorful pot of beans and steamer of aromatic rice fed 30 people at Amani house. I was reminded of Elaine Heath’s three practices of Eco-Evangelism, the third of which is to speak prophetically about unchecked consumerism. (Heath 2008, 171) The buffet in the early afternoon was not a celebratory feast, but simply an example of gluttony, whereas the miracle of loaves and fishes was experienced by that New Day community, and I experienced far more satisfaction, physically and spiritually, from that simple bowl than from the lunch that had preceded it.
The first time I read Heath’s book I was taken by her statement that “Christians are yearning for a simpler, unfettered relationship with God in community, for a new day for the church” (Heath 2008, 36). This reminded me of a postcolonial critique of the contemporary church, and I wrote in the margin of my book, “This longing may be met in and through the liberative journey of the base community and the encounter with ‘the least of these’, who are Christ to us when we serve them and when we refuse. They are Christ to us in relationship. We encounter God anew when we encounter them, and if we refuse, then we will not encounter God in grace, but in judgment.” Later I wrote, “Redemption for the Middle Class church is found in relationship with the poor and oppressed,” in response to Heath’s description of the Beguines’ commitment “to know experientially the ‘otherness’ of God’s kenotic love. It was this that I found at New Day, at least for myself. This is, in part, the explanation and justification for the place of white middle class churches in relationship to Missional micro congregations among the two thirds world, whether as immigrant and refugees, or in their home countries, such as those found at New Day.
I think the key to New Day, to Missional Communities and Micro Churches broadly considered, lies in Jesus’ statements about the kingdom of God. It is already here, maybe only within us, but then by grace among us. It is about mustard seeds growing under the noses of the establishment. It is not about going toe to toe with empires, secular or religious, any more than Jesus did with his contemporaries. This may be the reason that “the church” must continue to do attractional evangelism, undergirding as much as possible the establishment. All the while, the very same people are doing missional evangelism, out scattering seeds on the wind, letting them land where they may, trusting that some of them will find their way to good soil in which God will produce good fruit (Mark 4). In the process of grafting in, of filling new wineskins, the old vine, the old wine skins are redeemed – all are redeemed together.
Reference List
http://missionalwisdom.com/new-day/worshipping-communities/amani/ (accessed February 13, 2013)
http://biblesuite.com/greek/parate_re_seo_s_3907.htm (accessed February 11, 2013)
Miles, Sarah. 2010. Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Well, this launch of my new coaching business/ministry has been a whirlwind of
thoughts, hopes, dreams, questions, words, conversations,listening, praying, watching, tweaking, typing, driving, calling, texting,
asking for favors and offering favors.
I think that the more I tell my story, the greater clarity I gain and the more my words seem to make sense and find their own coherence. At least that is how it feels to me.
I have revamped my website and built a new Facebook Page for Ken G Crawford Coaching.
I have created initial business cards and flyers for both the business and ministry sides of my practice.
I have had business owners express interest in forming strategic alliances.
I have had individuals request a consultation to explore establishing a coaching relationship.I have had clergy indicate both need and desire to work work with a coach.
I still have to make decisions on the formation of the legal entity – LLC, S-Corp, SP, etc.
I still have some branding decisions to make in the short term.
I still need to decide on a name for the business and the ministry. I am leaning toward:
“Synchronous Life” – as in “Bring harmony your work, relational and spiritual energies.” “Synchronicity Ministries” and “Synchronous Life.” I want one central word or idea – i.e. “Synchronicity” that can be developed and riffed in a variety of ways for both commercial and non-profit ventures.
I am excited about the new things that God is unfolding in my life and ministry, and hopeful for all that is to come. I pray that this work makes good use of my gifts and talents, is a blessing to others in their lives, enables me to provide for my family, and ultimately glorifies God. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Leadership and Life Development Coaching. Ken G Crawford. Synchronous Life. 