Still Dreaming

Dreaming is the mental and spiritual activity of visualizing something invisible. perhaps. spiritual, that has not yet been actualized, but to which we are committed.

Welcome to the Dream Factory.

I decided to slightly revise and repost the first post I ever  published on this blog.

It was October 10, 2006.

There has been some water pass over, under, around, and through any number of bridges.

I was coaching someone slightly older than myself the other day and encouraged him to keep dreaming. I let him know that I was still dreaming as well.

These days, my dreams are bigger than they used to be.

They extend beyond my lifetime.

They require the next generation and the generation after that to carry them out.

I dream. On a restless summer night in a pool of my own perspiration, I dream.

In the quiet slumber of an October evening, I dream.

In the quickening of the morning and the settling of the evening, I dream.

And when I am awakened and as I move through the appointed day, my dreams do not die.

Yes, they are tamed by civility and harnessed by realism, but they persist through the day.

My dreams have been cooled by the drenching rain of discouragement, but not quenched.

They have been temporarily diverted by the icy onslaught of negative criticism and stilled by the paralyzing power of self doubt, but they emerge from the cold and persist.

I dream on.

I refuse to stop dreaming.

I do not subscribe entirely to the “All your dreams can come true; it can happen to you if you’re young at heart” philosophy. But I believe that our core dreams can drive us on to their own fulfillment in us as we submit to the One who has given them to us and who alone knows how to interpret them in our lives.

I believe that we were made to dream and that our dreams are the impulses that alert us to our significance. Yes, dreams can become distorted, self-centered, and wrongly inflated, but those distortions point to a deeper reality. Just as perversions of reality validate reality, dreams off center cry out for centering.

I dream on because my dreams are the impulses that validate my living. They remind me that I am not an accident, that my life has meaning, and that I am a part of a larger dream.

 And if dreaming is so vital for me, I want to help others dream and refine their dreams, fleshing them out with goals and strategies, reinforcing them with prayer and conforming them to the divine will from whence their essence is derived.

I dream of a life as an encourager of the dreams that have been planted in your heart. That is why I will spend the rest of my life and ministry as a coach to those who dream.

 I am not where I want to be. But I believe that where I am is not where I am going.

 I dream on.

 Come join me..

Since those who wait on the LORD renew strength and youth without weariness, perhaps that waiting and working and dreaming actually defines youth itself. If that is so, then maybe I do believe that, “All your dreams can come true; it can happen to you if you’re young at heart."