The Dreamers and the Dream
We were standing together in the Trapp Gallery in Community House. The meeting to
plan the founding of a new Unitarian Universalist congregation in the Somerset Hills
area of New Jersey had just concluded. My friend turned to me and said, "This sounds
like an interesting project; it might even be fun. But what I want to know is why do
you feel so passionate about the need to establish a new congregation. Why does
it matter so much to you?"
I explained to her that I have had occasion to drive out into that area of our state.
I have walked through the regional shopping mall. It is clear to me that not only
is Somerset County the fastest growing region of New Jersey, it is also full of young
families with young children. Someone is going to respond to those young people and
attempt to fill the spiritual needs in their lives. I recognize that not all of
them, perhaps not even most of them will be attracted to our kind of religion, but
many of them will be, if we let them know we exist. And frankly, I am not willing to abandon
them to the religious right, the fundamentalists and other forms of religious expression
which I believe to be destructive of the human spirit and which I believe represent a clear danger to our way of life. In the debate over the future of this nation
and the world, we cannot refuse to enter the discussion. We need a congregation
in places like Somerset County and places like Somerset County need a strong Unitarian
Universalist presence.
By the time I had finished, my friend had that glazed look about the eyes which suggested
that she had suddenly remembered how dangerous it can be to ask a preacher a simple
question. Almost inevitably, the answer turns into a sermon only you get to stand while it is delivered.
As I have thought about that conversation in the weeks which have passed, I find that
while I would affirm everything I said that evening, there is a deeper matter which
I did not address. It has to do with the peculiar role that religion plays in our
culture. Throughout our history, the religious community has been the keeper and the
generator of the dreams which have shaped our destiny as a people. Indeed, there
is a school of thought which insists that our first sense of being a peculiar people,
our first national awareness was the shared experience of the great religious awakening
of the mid-eighteenth century. There is a strong tradition which insists that the
American Revolution was rooted in the vision of the Puritan churches of New England.
It is clear from the historical record that many people saw the founding of the nation
and the establishment of constitutional government as a consequence of the new religious
understandings which swept the continent after the Revolution. Clearly, the demand
for an end to slavery was framed in terms of a religious as well as a political vision,
as were the struggle for women's rights, and the movement for the extension of civil
rights and the anti-war movement in the middle part of this century. Indeed, the
so-called "the culture wars" which have flared as the century draws to a close is one
more manifestation of the power of religious vision to shape and structure public
policy in the Great Republic.
The religious community is the generator and the keeper of the dreams which shape
our destiny. Over the course of my career, I have had occasion to see the power
which adheres to a religious community determined to fulfill its dreams. When I
left seminary, I was called to a church in suburban Chicago. It was a smallish congregation serving
a town which had been one of the first planned communities to be built after the
Second World War. Sometime in the late fifties, the men and women who comprised
that congregation looked around and discovered that they were living in a segregated community.
There were no African American residents in their town. The members of the church
dreamed of an inclusive community in which the barriers dividing the races would
be broken and swept away.
In this regard they were not unlike many other congregations around the country or
even in their own town which deplored the racial segregation of our society. What
made them different was that they decided that dreaming a great dream was meaningless
unless they acted upon that dream. They might have looked around and concluded that their
numbers were so small, their resources so slight that there was nothing they could
do. Instead, rather than focus on their inadequacies, they decided to act out of
an assumption of abundance. They set about to find black pioneers who were prepared
to accept the subtantial risks of breaking the racial barriers. Then they sought
out an appropriate house, arranged a purchase using white surrogate buyers. When
the new black families moved into their new homes, members of the congregation provided friendship
and support and protection.
Beyond this, members of the congregation solicited statements from residents who affirmed
that they would welcome African American neighbors and began to pressure realtors
to open the market in those neighborhoods. As a result, by the time I arrived in
Park Forest, the town was known as the best integrated of all Chicago's southern suburbs.
A small congregation with a few hundred members had been captured by a dream, had
focused on its power rather than its weakness and then had accomplished the impossible. In the process, they infused their own congregation with a sense of mission, with
a deep pride, with a profound sense of the important role their faith played in their
own lives and in the larger community.
I witnessed a similar kind of phenomenon in a church I once served in Northern Virginia
at the height of the drug culture. At the time, the young people of the surrounding
communities had made the church grounds a center of the drug traffic. The Christmas before I arrived, the church youth group had been busted by the police for using
drugs. The church was at its wits end, attempting to respond to this challenge.
The older members were afraid to visit the church except on Sunday mornings. Younger
members were fearful of the impact of the drug culture on their own children. The congregation
felt an obligation to minister to the young people they found on their own doorstep,
but understood that such a response could alienate the community and drain the church's resources. In the end, they chose not to respond to their fears and perceived
inadequacies but to focus instead upon their dreams and an abundance of talent and
commitment.
That congregation decided upon a bold program of intergenerational programming. Creating
a thing they called the Free Microcosmic University, members of the church offered
intergenerational courses in everything from photography, plumbing, auto mechanics, and bread baking to mythology, world religion and film critique. They created a
summer program of drama and art and music. They celebrated the presence of the young
people among them. In the end, they revitalized their own religious community, they
established an imaginative ministry to the most disillusioned and alienated and discouraged
of young people and they created a new role for themselves in the world--a role which
offered the opportunity to make a difference in the world.
I tell you these stories because in each instance, a congregation, facing a moral
challenge, chose to embrace its dreams, to focus not upon its fears or its inadequacies
but rather upon its dreams and strengths and to act out of a culture of abundance
rather than a culture of scarcity. And in each case, a religious community transformed
itself and a small part of the world. I tell you these stories to demonstrate the
power of a religious community when it is captured by a dream and when it acts upon
that dream.
Dreams, you see, are to the human community what genes are to the individual body.
Dreams define the limits of the possible. Dreams describe the inherent potential
within any community. Without dreams there can be no cultural evolution, no better
society. Without dreams we are limited to what has been. "Without a vision," in the words
of the Hebrew scriptures, "the people perish." Religious communities, by their nature,
are communities of dreamers, of people who see the world as it is, who understand
the great distance between what is and what might be, who refuse to be satisfied with
that discrepancy, of people who sing, with Jacob Trapp, "Wonders still the world
shall witness, never known in days of old...." Religious communities, by their nature,
speak for unrealized possibilities and challenge the complacency of the status quo.
But dreams are not enough. A religious community must also be a community of courage,
willing to risk in behalf of those dreams. I have known congregations which have
failed in this final test. I have served congregations unable to see beyond the
challenge of mere survival, congregations so wedded to a culture of scarcity that they respond
to every dream with the plaintive wail that we are too few, too poor, to over-committed.
And you know what. In every case they were right. Living in a culture of scarcity, they regularly sacrificed their dreams to a harsh and narrow reality. Living
in a culture of scarcity, they took no risks, dared nothing and lost everything--their
reason for being and eventually their existence as well. Dreamers have to believe
that the dream is work taking risks, worth supporting. Dreamers have to believe that
they exist in a culture of abundance in which their efforts together do not diminish
their resources but multiply them, making possible results which could not have been
predicted at the outset. And religious communities are nothing if they are not communities
centered around dreams.
In this church, we have been about the process of dreaming larger dreams and then
working to make those dreams come true. Six years ago, for example, the Board of
Trustees dreamed of a powerful and creative religious education program for our children
and for all our people. We as a congregation set about to make that dream happen. We
said that if it were to happen we would need to make the position of Religious Educator
a full-time, professional position. We didn't know where the money would come from; we weren't sure where the people would come from. Nonetheless we committed ourselves
to that dream. You know the result. Our church school has tripled, our adult education
program has exploded. Last month we created the position of Minister of Religious Education and called Carol Haag to fill that post, joining a Parish ministry which
had been expanded to serve a larger and more vital congregation.
But beyond that, the congregation, dared to dream larger dreams. We determined that
this institution, while it was making a difference in our own lives, had a responsibility
to make a difference in the world around us. We committed ourselves to a number
of projects. We would extend our religious vision to embrace a congregation in Transylvania,
struggling, in a difficult economic and political climate, to complete the first
new Unitarian church building to be constructed in that country in this century.
We would embrace our responsibility to Unitarian Universalism on this continent by
committing ourselves to full funding of our share of the cost of the Unitarian Universalist
Association and the Metro New York District. We would embrace our responsibility to those in need around us by expanding our work with the homeless to include funding
of a transitional apartment for families attempting to move out of homelessnness
and into a more settled life, by providing funds for feeding the homeless in Summit,
by supporting outreach work in East Orange and in Newark. In all, we pledged more than
ten percent of our budget to programs and projects outside our own church walls at
the same time we committed ourselves to an enlarged and expanded ministry within
our walls. We were a little nervous about where the money would come from and how we would
put it all together. We chose to dream and to act out of a culture of abundance
rather than scarcity. And to a surprising degree, we have realized the promise.
We have met our obligations, we have met our commitments, and we are stronger and blessed
with more resources as a result.
But there is this about dreams: Dreams beget dreams. Even as they are translated
into reality, they are replaced by new dreams. We dream of an enhanced music program.
As we celebrate the twentieth year of our Flentrop organ, we dream of giving that
marvelous instrument a cleaning and a total restoration. This enables us to reach out
to the larger community with a special ministry of music. We dream of an expanded
program over the summer, rather than our tradition of virtually closing our doors
for two and a half months. We dream of an expanded voice in the community as we seek to
offer a series of Sunday afternoon lectures on important issues confronting our world--lectures
which will bring to the area people who can enter with power into the debates which have been described as "the culture wars." We dream of continuing and enlarging
our ministry to the homeless. We dream of continuing our partnership with the Unitarian
Church in Barot, Transylvania, and look forward to a visit to Summit by the minister of that church and his wife in late summer. We dream of becoming a more effective
witness to the importance of the environmental challenges which confront our world.
We dream of presenting a powerful advocacy for children. And, in covenant with
our neighboring Unitarian Universalist congregations, we dream of establishing a new
congregation.
But even this is not the end of our dreaming. For we are convinced that hidden within
each of you is a dream which is waiting to be voiced. Somewhere, deep inside you
probably have an outrageous dream of what we might be and what we might become, a
dream which has the potential to open up a future of more radical dimensions and deeper
meaning for us. Part of the duty of religious community is to honor the dreams and
provide the means by which those visions become reality. Dreams are the cultural
genes which shape the future--your future, our future, the world's future. And religious
communities are the generators of the dreams, the keepers of the dreams, the servers
of the dreams.
Nearly eighty-eight years ago, a handful of women and men in this town dreamed this
church into existence. Five years later, they dreamed this building which is our
home into existence. And less than five years after that, as the nation pepared
to enter the First World War, this congregation gave substance to their dream of a religious
community committed to freedom when they supported their minister's right to preach
truth as he saw it, even though many of them and most of the town disagreed with
his pacifism. Over the years, with ministers like A. Powell Davies and Jacob Trapp and Deane
Starr and Jan Knost we have dreamed bold dreams. And when we have allowed ourselves
to function out of a culture of abundance, we have achieved a great deal. Now, as
the century draws to a close and we prepare to enter upon a new millennium, we are
called to dream again as others have dreamed before us, to shape a religious community
which nurtures the human spirit, which speaks out to the world about the challenges
which confront our common society, which seeks to make a profound difference in the world
we share in common.
Over the course of the next few weeks, you are going to hear a great deal about the
dreams which will shape our congregation in the next year. Sooon of you will receive
the brochure entitled, "We Shall Dream Again." When it comes in the mail, read it
and accept the invitation it includes to you to dream boldly about our congregation.
On the second and third weekends of April, you will be invited to join a "vision
group," a neighborhood gathering where we can share our dreams for this congregation
and for its role in the community and the world. And then, you will have an opportunity
to help fund those dreams we hold in common. We have learned that we have the power
to be what our dream call us to become. But dreams do not become realities unless
we provide the resources to enable them.
The great African American poet, Langston Hughes, challenged us with these words:
Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow
Hughes is right, as far as he goes. We need to dream bold dreams; we need to hold
them close to our hearts as a promise that we and the world hold secret and unrealized
potential. But we must do more than hold fast to dreams. We must serve them; we
must provide the commitment and the energy and the resources needed to transform the dream
into reality. In the image of A. Powell Davies, "We will dream again as others have
dreamed before us." And then, we shall build a road that others shall travel into
the world we have dreamed.