It’s short; only two stanzas.
And it rhymes. So it’s easy to memorize and remember. I’m talking about a poem by Langston Hughes, called simply, “Dreams.”
“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.”
I’m not sure my students are dreamers, at least not in the way Hughes suggests. They seem much more focused on how they are going to get all their homework done while working low wage jobs just short of 40 hours a week (no benefits), and how they will manage to pay off their college loans.
One student worries religiously about medical debt and the escalated cost of her health insurance.
Of course, few of us dream of going to the Olympics and then set in motion the kind of lifestyle and routines that will enable us to get there. But dreams are available to all of us.
All of us can have at least a modest sense of what we would like to do, where we would like to go, who we hope to become.
Joanna Macy has been a dream enabler for years. As a peace and ecological activist, her writings have helped many weather the myriad storms humans make, whether in the nuclear arms race or the race to climate catastrophe.
Her latest book to cross my path is, “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power.” Together with Chris Johnstone, a specialist in the psychology of resilience, they present a guide for viewing the world around us and the part we can play in bringing sanity and love to the spaces we inhabit.
One simple practice they suggest is to first of all, identify and imagine your dream. What does it look like? Give it some definition. Then begin to take steps backward.
What would it take to get there? What would be the first step? What resources are available to help you get there? What are the obstacles? Are there supportive persons or communities of people who will help? Is there a path to the dream visible?
The sub-title of the Macy book is so appropriate. I still read and watch the news. It’s a mess. I’m aware of all the lies and misinformation, the seemingly endless violence and ecological damage happening each and every day. But I’m able to remain hopeful because I leave the news on the TV screen and computer, in the print of the paper and journal, as soon as I get in bed at night. For an hour I read fiction. It enables me to enter sleep in another world, a world of my dreams, leaving the mess we’re in for the freshness of the morning.
The latest bed-time fiction is a trilogy by a South Dakota author, B. Burgess Junek. It’s a “coming of age fantasy adventure about friendship, belief, sacrifice, love, life and death.” I know the author. I know his writing will be enriched by a tried and tested spiritual heritage. Characters will demonstrate unexpected resilience and creative power. Their messes may be more fantastic, like riding ibexes through the mountains, but the challenge for following the dream can be the same.
Which brings me to another kind of dream; not the waking kind but the dreams in sleep. Joanna Macy includes one of her nightmares in the book on active hope. One day she had been reviewing public health statistics around nuclear power plants as she worked on a lawsuit about radioactive waste.
Before going to bed, she was looking through some old pictures of her children to find one for her daughter’s high school yearbook. Her nightmare included walking with those three little children into a horrendous toxic landscape, barren and rocky, with a skin burning substance in the air, and leaving them there.
The dreams of sleep can be motivating, including the nightmares. My own commitment against the possession and use of nuclear weapons derives from a dream. In it, I’m standing on the side of a public green space with houses on both sides, watching a nuclear weapon; like a huge bomb with eyes, moving ever so slowing horizontally along the green, scanning the area and looking for a target.
The Macy book reminded me of the dreams of the Egyptian Pharaoh in the Bible. His dream was about seven thin and scrawny cows devouring seven fat and healthy cows. A second dream was about seven heads of grain that were healthy and full being eaten by seven heads of grain that were small and sickly.
Joseph was able to interpret the dreams as warning of a seven year famine coming and the need to prepare for it.
The dreams were revelatory! How could the Pharaoh have known or even expected such a future, or even thought about such an occurrence?
Whether one believes the dreams of sleep come from divinity or the unconscious, they can be motivating and creative, if remembered and understood.
The dreams of sleep and wakefulness are both contributors to hope. ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Yes, but hope remains. And dreams help keep it active.
