Living Your Dream

 This week's quote reads, "Do not dream your life, live your dream."

I believe there is room for both. It is good to have hopes and dreams about a better world, a better life, for ourselves and others. But it's also important to translate those dreams and hopes into action, to put them into practice.

Life is a process of becoming, evolving - we never actually get there, wherever "there" is. There is always more to do, more to learn, more to discover, more to experience, more to get excited about. But many of us fall into the trap of thinking, "If only I could do / achieve / be X, Y or Z, then I'll be happy, then I'll be content."

I believe there is an important difference between setting your sail to the future and looking forward to getting there, and having some idea of how might that happen, and ignoring all the joys of our present lives in favour of dreams about a yet-to-be perfect life, which will never, ever materialise. Living in the future in this way is such a waste of our lives, of our emotional energy. And it doesn't make us happy. So why do we do it?

Living in the present is living your dream. Deeply experiencing all the passing instances of awe and wonder and joy (as well as grief and sadness, anger and loss) is living your dream. The Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who famously went to live in the woods for a while to deeply experience life, has a lot to say about this; as he explains, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

He also wrote, "What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us." and "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."

Yet he also comes down firmly on the side of "live your dream", advising us, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

So yes, dream your dreams - we all need something to work towards; but then put the foundations under them. For me, this is finding the right balance between dreaming your life and living your dream. 

Reach for the Stars

 This week's quote read, "Take time to dream - it is the way to the stars."

Now, call me pedantic and literal, but it takes a lot more than dreaming to reach the stars. It also takes a lot of hard work: time, effort and dedication. Having a dream, as Martin Luther King Jr did, can inspire us and the people around us to put in the effort and dedication required to reach the goal, but will not by itself make a difference.

Throughout human history, the stars have symbolised something high, out of human reach, unattainable, except perhaps by a very special few. And yet, the yearning to explore our world, the solar system, even the stars, seems to lie deep within us. Since the earliest records began, there have been stories of treks and voyages into the unknown - the desire to discover what is over the horizon, out of sight, is very strong.

And in the last century or so, as more and more of planet Earth has been explored, documented, charted, rather than remaining "terra incognita", this curiosity has extended to the skies around our planet. Science fiction writers and film makers have dreamed about what life out among the stars might be like, and we have been treated to fabulous filmic interpretations  - the planets, the people, the alien creatures. And who knows how much programmes, films and books such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, Out of the Silent Planet, and The Expanse have influenced the dreams of people, who have gone on to dedicate their lives to the space programme...

My other lingering doubt about reaching the stars is to wonder whether the huge amounts of money and time and expertise might have been better spent on feeding the hungry, healing the sick, saving our planet from the ravages of time and humankind... Maybe our dreams need to start small - dreaming of a better world around us, in our country, our neighbourhood, our community, our family....

Holding on to our Dreams

There's a wonderful post doing the rounds on Facebook at present, in the wake of the US election result, written by environmentalist, Chris Packham. It reads, "Things have just got a lot more difficult. Here's what I think. I had no control over what just happened. None. But I do have control over how I will react to it. And I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter."

Thank you, Chris. This is such a timely reminder, when the world seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket (incidentally, *why* in a hand basket? - I've never understood that!). Yes, we will need time to grieve, to mourn what might have been. And no emotion is wrong - if we need to scream our woes to the skies, that is fine, or weep quietly in a corner.

But we must not allow this election result to destroy our dreams of a better, fairer, more peaceful and equitable world. A world based around the values of love and compassion, justice and peace. Working towards those dreams, witnessing for those values, is under our control, is in our gift. People like Tr*mp will ultimately only win if everyone else gives up fighting.

Another quote doing the rounds comes from JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: 

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

"I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter." "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." 

Different words, same message. In the hard, dark days ahead, may we all be given the strength, the passion, to hold onto our dreams.

Why Reason is Important

When I first read this week's quote, by Austrian philosopher, Karl Popper, I was doubtful about it. It reads, "The do-gooders are the real enemies of an open society."

Luckily, it is my practice to try to discover the actual words of the quote, rather than depending on Google to translate them correctly from the German (although, to be fair, if often does a good job). And discovered that the quote comes from his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and that his argument is not a simple dismissal of the works of "do-gooders". 

Instead, he seems to be advocating the primacy of reason over emotion, to which, as a Unitarian, I have to give serious consideration. Here is another, somewhat longer quote, from the same book: "Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell - that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men."

Hmm. I'm not sure I entirely agree with him - I believe there is room for hopes and dreams in our lives, otherwise what would be the point? Yet at the same time, I can reluctantly understand what he seems to be saying: that when those hopes and dreams are founded on emotions rather than reason, they may not have a very good chance of success. I believe we need a mixture of hopes and dreams with hard-headed reason and commonsense, if we are to move towards a better society for all of us.

It reminds me of the oft-misquoted words of Samuel Johnson, from 1775: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." What Johnson actually said, commenting on "the unhappy failure of pious resolves", was, "Sir, hell is paved with good intentions."

So perhaps our take-away from this should be not to rush into blindly "doing good" without a wider and reasoned consideration of all the possible consequences of our actions. Which may be a colder way to live, yet ultimately, it may do more good than the alternative.

Dreams and Reality

This week's quotation comes from the author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Eupery. "My dreams are more real than the moon, than the dunes, than everything around me."

It may be tempting, at the moment, to retreat to the world of dreams. Because in our dreams, the world is a happier place, with everyone living together in peace and amity. There is no illness, no poverty, no disease, no injustice. Which is why the lyric's of John Lennon's wonderful song, Imagine, still have so much power, all these years later.

Imagine...

But I believe that although it important to have dreams, to work towards such a world, it is more important to live in this one, and to accept the realities that we have been given.

A few months ago, a friend asked me this question: "What makes you come alive?" and I have been thinking about the answers ever since. For many of us, interaction with the natural world - walking by the sea, making a garden, walking a regular route and notice the day-to-day changes in the nature around us, being awed by natural beauty - play an important part in re-connecting us with the spiritual; with making us come alive. And so it is with me. To which I would also add, interacting with family, friends and fellow Unitarians - even if we can only do this virtually at present.

I am blessed that I live in a village surrounded by open countryside. When I go for a walk, it is wonderful to be out in the changing seasons - to see and savour and appreciate the blossom in spring (which is coming out all over at the moment), the mass of wildflowers in the summer, the first conkers in autumn and the elegant spareness of the trees in winter. This connectedness of the natural world is something that very often gets lost in Western society. We are so busy doing the job in hand, rushing to the next appointment, that we don't take enough time out to appreciate the world around us.

Maybe this time of enforced staying at home could be doing us a favour - forcing us to slow down, open our eyes, and appreciate the beautiful reality with which we are surrounded. Even if we live in a city, there is still the sky above us, and trees along our streets.

So yes, dreams are important, but give me reality any day!

The power of dreams

This week's quotation is by Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, above a beautiful photo of Neuschwanstein Castle. It reads "Wenn wir von unseren Träumen leiten lassen, wird der Erfolg all unsere Erwartungen übertreffen."

Which being translated, means: "If we let our dreams guide us, success will surpass all our expectations."

I have a dream.

At the 2015 General Assembly meetings, all ldelegates were given a 48-page document entitled Vision for Our Future produced by the Executive Committee, which also went out to all congregations. It was followed by another, entitled The Next Steps.

In the Vision for Our Future document, there were a series of headings, the first of which read, "We want to be a faith that matters." Well, our faith does matter - it matters enormously, both to current Unitarians, and to potential Unitarians, who are out there, desperately seeking somewhere they can call home, somewhere they can find like-hearted (not necessarily like-minded) folk to accompany them on their own spiritual / religious journeys.

BUT, unless those seekers (and current Unitarians) clearly understand who we are and what we're about, we aren't going to attract new people through our doors.

We Unitarians have always been so hot and strong about being the "faith without a creed" and about the pre-eminence of freedom of belief. And that is right and good. BUT I'm afraid it is now becoming a disadvantage in some ways, as only too often we find it difficult to articulate our faith, except in negative terms. For example, there was a photo of a particular congregation's noticeboard on Facebook a while back - five sheets of paper with statements that started "We don't".

We need to find easy-to-articulate, POSITIVE answers to "What do Unitarians believe?" and "What are Unitarians?" Which is why I carried out my survey in 2017, which resulted in the book Unitarians: Together in Diversity. Which is chock-full of positive statements about what Unitarians believe, and how we come together in community.

But I have come to believe that the statement the Executive Committee made in Vision for Our Future, about needing to "re-establish an identity, a unique spiritual position" is key to our future as a denomination, as a movement. As James Barry so acutely pointed out in his contribution, "We don't have the advantage of the UUA, who have their seven principles defined."

I believe that the most vital task for British Unitarians today is to adopt a widely agreed statement such as the UUA's Seven Principles (or why not just adopt them wholesale? - they work for me!). I believe that one of the main reasons why the Quakers are so much more successful than we are, is that other people understand what they believe in and stand for.

We could even produce our own versions of Advices and Queries, the Quaker touchstones, and of Quaker Faith and Practice, their comprehensive book about Quaker beliefs and practices. Why not?

The Power of Dreams

Human beings are born with a great capacity for belief. Small children believe everything their parents say, which is how they construct a meaningful picture of the world they live in. In our particular culture, this also usually involves belief in what Terry Pratchett calls "anthropomorphic personifications" such as Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. How many of you went to see Peter Pan in pantomime as a small child and clapped to save Tinkerbell's life? - I certainly did.

But as you get older, your parents start to introduce you to "the real world", in which money is not in infinite supply "D'you think money grows on trees?" and someone in the playground will tell you that "Father Christmas is your parents really." This evolution of belief is necessary in order to fit into our complicated modern society - it is generally accepted that if you believe in too many things, you are bound to become disillusioned in the end.

I find this widespread cynicism quite sad, and ask myself the question "Whatever happened to people who believed in things?" I think that there are very many people who used to be idealistic and believed that the world could be made a better place, but there are also many who have become disillusioned over the years, and who dare not believe in anything much any longer, in case they are let down.

Leonard Nimoy, whose recent passing saddened me, once wrote "I am an incurable romantic:I believe in hope, dreams and decency. I believe in love, tenderness and kindness. I believe in mankind." He proved this with his life.

Daring to believe that way involves trust and faith. If you have those, anything is possible. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. "I've decided that I'm going to do battle for my philosophy. You ought to believe something in life, believe that thing so fervently that you will stand up with it till the end of your days." Fifty years ago, we saw how far that philosophy took him, as a champion of human rights, whose leadership changed the whole course of history, brought a new dimension of dignity to human life, new hope for freedom and the community of man. Such people are inspirational, because they have dared to dream, and then spent their whole lives working to make their dreams come true.

This weekend, friends and colleagues from the Unitarian Universalist Association will be marching from Selma to Montgomery, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the marches in 1965 which led to the passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, an important achievement of the American Civil Rights Movement. To quote Wikipaedia: "Activists publicized the three protest marches to walk the 54-mile highway from Selma to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery, as showing the desire of black American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression." Very many white Unitarian Universalists and other activists joined their black brothers and sisters on the march.

The dream, or the vision, or the ideal, is only the beginning of the process. To turn that dream into something concrete and real involves a lot of hard work. It is very easy to lose sight of the dream, and to give up half way. But if your belief in your cause or vision is strong enough, then anything is possible.

People need something to believe in , something to strive for, something to give life a deeper meaning. Fifty years ago, on the road from Selma to Montgomery, that became real.