Dead Dreams, Dreamers (August Ordinary)

"Dead Dreams, Dreamers, Walking -- on Water?

Caller ID, reducing risk? Softening surprise? Whom we'll find on the other end? Verification exactly who thinks we need speaking to? Suspicion caller might be divine? Pursuant to panic: Who is this? What do you want with me? How did you find my identity? Sure this is not a wrong number? Any way I can ID my way out of this call? Squeamish, Security-obsessed; next to Dictatorship, Police State, never so many means of Identity Check, fears of Identity Theft, Identity much an industry as Reality? Are we really who we say we are? Doing what we appear to be doing? Or are we just making it up to no good? Species ever such mystery to ourselves as today? Creator's last laughs, behalf of Creation? State Trooper to Stopped Driver: "You got any ID?" "'Bout what?"

Or is it Feminized Faces and Features we'd rather not recall? Woman Wisdom! Sophia! "Let us make Humankind in Our Image, according to Our Likeness."
To/Gether! Fe/Male! From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning, before Earth came into being . . . I was a alongside, a mythical mistress craftsperson, delighting day after day, ever playful everywhere in the world, fulfilled in my being with daughters and sons of the whole human race.

Questioning stoniest sources, external authorities, oppressive peer pressures; Sophia, Spirit, erasing, writing directly on hearts, assuring of cosmic belonging, relieving by dream of Solomon, born of David, out of and into blood-letting, no matter, "I am only a child!" Always about to be cut short at that! "No one like you has been before you! No one like you shall rise up after you!"

But circumstances helped me. To correct a natural indifference, I was placed halfway between poverty and the sun. Poverty kept me from thinking all was well under the sun and in history; the sun taught me that history was not everything. (Albert Camus) I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day. (Stanley Kunitz)

We conquer, we preside, we secure, we tame, we quench. We are mocked, we are flagged, we are chained, we are imprisoned, we are stoned, we are sawn in two. Disciplines of dysfunction? "Five in one household divided, three against two . . . " Families forever falling, growing, apart -- remnants of lived faith? Pastimes of Patriarchy: Who are the brothers pissed at, really? Jacob, now Israel, nation-tainting, "loved Joseph more than any other of his children;" child of old age, pride of persistent prowess, parental pet, resplendent in "long coat with sleeves," unsuited for manual labor! Plenty of time on pristine hands, lolling, laxly, like royalty, even then dreaming? Committing poetry? Flagrantly, faultfully, feelinglessly, dispatching the favorite: Report on your brothers!

Some honor even among sibling rivals, beset, besaddled by Cain, Abel's blood crying out still, rupturing rest of Cain's restless existence; subservient sons discerning, Joseph's death likely compounded by Jacob's as well, selling, instead, for less than Judas does Jesus? Blood-soaking cloak, good as destroying, life lived as if dead to own brother, now chosen son good as dead to him, too -- How to curb penchants for perpetual, peevishly petulant pain? "There's a pale horse coming and I'm going to ride it, I'll rise in the morning my fate decided, I'm a dead man walking . . . It's just a dead man talking . . . Between our dreams and actions lies this world." (Bruce Springsteen)

Dead dreams, and dreamers, walking again? Crossing to other sides, changing equations? Sobered by blistering bloods of our century -- treading, at last, senseless slaughtering, unuttered dreading, of Hiroshima? ID-immolating?

If we refuse to speak truth to power, says the story, we will end up speaking lies or silence to the powerless -- and doing murder. If we refuse to see clearly, truthfully, the world our parents have bequeathed us, says the story, then we will be unable to make the world we want to make . . . It is almost as if God learns from the mistakes and failures of the earlier saga and starts over to work things out in another way. (Arthur Waskow)

One side of us Jewish, one Gentile? Going over to other side? Isn't that treason? Betraying every good reason to stay in the boat? Wading no waters? Making no waves? Unsuspecting how far our "little faith" carries? Dead dreams, dreamers, walking, talking, parting -- starting somewhere.

There was once a group of believers in nonviolence who gathered along a waterway in the Pacific Northwest. A giant submarine that could destroy all life on Earth was coming. The believers practiced in rowboats how they would blockade the submarine . . .

All the people in the rowboats, whatever our tactics, had the same faith in nonviolence that Peter has initially in walking to Jesus over the water . . .

On the day the submarine finally came, so did 99 Coast Guard boats, which the government had assigned to protect its world-destructive weapon . . . The Coast Guard sank some rowboats with water cannons, crushed others, boarded the mother ship with drawn guns, and tied up the believers in nonviolence like pigs waiting for a roast . . .

When Peter became aware of the wind he got frightened and began to sink. When we were confronted with the Coast Guard, we also experienced fear and got sunk quickly. So, a lack of faith? I remember, too, though, that when Peter began to sink he cried out in faith to the Lord, who reached out and saved him. I think the real alternatives were posed in our case, like Peter's, by the more enduring question of whether to surrender then to fear, or to realize how totally reliant on love we were to continue such experiments in faith. "Lord, save us!" was our way, like Peter's, to continue in future venturing out on the waters in the midst of great winds. (Jim Douglass)