Have Faith in Your Dreams

This morning, as I was in my Spirit mind, I was startled by the still soft voice asking me to listen.  I took notice of the voice and was open to what needed to be heard.  As I opened myself to listen, I was still in worship, singing along to a Ricki Byars Beckwith tune.  A bit more insistent, I was entreated to listen.  In that moment, I realized that my listening to God wasn't much listening at all.  Hearing and acknowledging the urging to listen, I continued as I had been and still expected to hear something.  So I went into the silence so that I might hear.  "When did you stop believing in your dreams?"  My first thought was to deny that I'd stopped believing in dreams.  But, when I looked to see what was true in the question, I began to remember how I used to believe in dreams.


At some point along the way, I got it mixed up a bit.  Back in the day, I knew that my dreams had power and I acted like I knew it.  But as I look back, I can see the slow erosion of that faith.  I'm not sure when I began to have more faith in my ideas than I did in my dreams.  I think it may be cumulative affect of having to articulate cogent ideas in grant applications.  It may be the result of participating in so many planning groups and community meetings.  Or maybe I just got my priorities mixed up somewhere along the way.  Even over the past few weeks, I can see how visioning for Manifesto (that's what's next) has been influenced more by ideas than by dreams.  In some ways it made me sad to sit with the truth that I'd stopped believing in dreams; I mean really believing in them.  


I used to have an old Peugeot 505.  I bought the car with a salvaged title and I liked that it was a bit quirky and different, like me.  It was a great car, until one day it just stopped running.  Having spent what should have been my senior year in high school in servitude to my father's high school auto shop classroom, I had a basic understanding of how the mechanics of cars worked.  I could tell that the car wasn't getting any fuel to the fuel pump.  But I couldn't figure out why.  Peugeot had long stopped selling cars in the U.S. and it was hard to find a mechanic who specialized in Peugeots and didn't charge an arm and a leg.  I kept reading the service manuals, trying to find the answer myself.  After a few weeks, I had a dream that I'd taken my car to a mechanic.  In the dream, he looked under the hood, fiddled with this and that, and kept eliminating possible causes.  After a while he told me that I needed a fuel pump tachometric relay.  He showed me where to find it under the dashboard.  In the dream, he pulled it from under the dash and unplugged the old one and showed me what and easy fix it was.  In the morning, I was so excited that I jumped from the bed and ran to my Peugeot Service Manual, and sure enough, there was a part called a fuel pump tachometric relay.  I grabbed the phone book and turned to the Yellow Pages and found a dealership that had sold Peugeots and still had parts in stock.  The part cost about $160, and it was an hour drive to the dealership.  Long story short, I bought the part and plugged it in as I was shown.  The car started right up and never gave me another problem for as long as I owned it.  My father, a highly skilled mechanic, never believed that I fixed the car myself.  He said there is no way that I could have had a dream and then fixed the car.    But that's the gospel truth.


Another example comes from when I worked for the American Red Cross.  As we were launching our first major donor campaigns, I was tasked with researching donor recognition systems, including a donor acknowledgement wall for the lobby. The challenge that we'd identified was installing something that was a reflection of the esteem in which we held our donors while not being so nice that it looked like we were squandering donor dollars.  Some of these systems were so elaborate that they cost $50,000 or more.  At this time, it was not uncommon for me to have a dream and come to work the next day and tell my assistant, Cindy, about them.  Often, we followed my dreams.  I remember the mornings when coming to work, as she entered her office directly across from mine, I'd call to her with fierce urgency.  She would ask "what, did you have another dream?"  Anyway, I had a dream that we were having the major donor function where we were to unveil the new donor wall.  And there it was and it was beautiful.  The next morning I met with my executive director and drew it for him.  He liked it enough that we had a nicer rendering made.  This system was simple yet elegant.  And best of all, we found that we could have it custom fabricated for less than five grand.  I left the American Red Cross a few months later to work for AIDS Foundation San Diego.  A few years later, I randomly stopped by the Red Cross because I heard that Bob Wussler, the executive director for more than 20 years was retiring.  As I walked into the lobby, my breath was taken and my heart skipped a beat.  There, on the wall, was the donor recognition system that had come to me by a dream.  Even the small details like the lighting was as I remembered it.


Back in those days, I had faith in my dreams.  I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I know that I have to get back to that place.  As I move forward in developing a new nonprofit and a consulting practice, I know that there is something instructive in my dreams.  In my dreams is where the fertile soil of possibility and divine inspiration meet.  


I know now to trust and rely on my thoughts; but I must have  faith in my dreams believing that they are divinely inspired.  I tap into that which is greater than me and place my trust in its keeping, knowing that what has been promised will be fulfilled.  And that is the nature of God; the nature that I choose to plug into and hold in my awareness.  And so it is.