Daring to Dream in the Desert

Lent is here. On Thursday morning, as I was driving in to work, I metaphorically took a look around at my internal and external landscape: "Yes," I recognized, nodding to myself, "here we are in the desert, again."

The desert wilderness is a familiar setting for Lent. The season typically begins with the Gospel texts telling the story of Jesus going out into the wilderness following his baptism, to face the devil's temptations. The Old Testament imagery of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years on their journey to the Promised Land also comes to mind.

I'm continually amazed at how closely my own life cycles seem to mirror the church's liturgical calendar. This is probably one of several key reasons my own Lutheran faith has been a good spiritual home for me. Last year, during this time, I was navigating a wilderness of still adjusting to a new life in a crazy big city. The church calendar provides for me what has been a helpful framework for orienting my own human story within a story that is greater than mine. It helps both shift and shape my focus towards that bigger picture so I don't get lost in my own "stuff." It provides me with a system for placing a more positive spin on certain life events as they unfold, as it gives me a better vantage point for attributing deeper meaning to things that might otherwise appear meaningless. "Wrestling with the devil in the wilderness" is a struggle much easier to endure when you know that Easter is coming. Easter has never failed me. In a prior blog post I wrote about the notion that "We live by the stories we tell" (Elie Wiesel). My own living takes place within the drama of a story that is much broader and wider and longer and deeper than my own. This helps me make greater sense of my life.

Lent is an appropriate time for wrestling with one's demons. This past summer I encountered a written meditation about this "confrontation":

"If you therefore go to the desert to be rid of all the dreadful people and all the awful problems in your life, you will be wasting your time. You should go to the desert for a total confrontation with yourself. For one goes to the desert to see more and to see better. One goes to the desert especially to take a closer look at the things and people one would rather not see, to face situations one would rather avoid, to answer questions one would rather forget." ~Alessandro Pronzato, Meditations on the Sand

Lent is a time for being brutally honest with ourselves. I wholeheartedly believe this can be done in a loving manner--being brutally honest does not mean self-battering. Regardless, it still might hurt just a bit as we examine ourselves and start to recognize the various facades we have built up in our minds, our hearts, and even our souls. Lent is a time for taking the steps toward returning to a more authentic version of ourselves. Who is it that God created me to be? How is the quality of my life suffering as a result of not embracing the fullness of that vision? What are my Easter hopes this year--what kind of healing do I need to bring to my mind and my heart and my soul? What will this year's Easter resurrection look like in my own life story?

I am a dreamer. As I look around at my current wilderness surroundings, I recognize that I am wrestling with certain byproducts of this fact. As a dreamer, I hope. As a dreamer, I tend to see visions of things not-yet-existing-but-seem-so-completely-plausible. As a dreamer, I am more optimist than pessimist. As a dreamer, I often view limitations as artificial perceptions. As a dreamer, I recognize that I am typically at odds with many predominant worldviews. And, just yesterday, I realized the fact that, as a dreamer, there are some days in which my life is probably more fiction than real. But this doesn't make it any less true. One of the unfortunate byproducts of dreaming is simply dreams unrealized--some dreams may still eventually be realized over the course of time, others will ultimately fail to catch the wind they need to set sail. And sometimes there is an ongoing cycle of dreams being seemingly dashed, yet resurrected again and again, refusing to be laid to rest permanently in spite of their repeated failure at managing to get both feet off the ground.

So, it seems, my Lenten journey this year is going to include wrestling in the desert with these hopes of mine that are still stuck hanging around, waiting for their wind. In light of the theme of love I articulated in my last post, I'm going to be reflecting on my own visions of love and why the things I dream about sometimes seem so incredibly elusive. The Easter story, in a nutshell, is about God's intimate, passionate love for us. This story shapes everything I believe about love. When my hopes get dashed, I think it's because of my repeated refusal to buy into society's competing worldviews of what love is "supposed" to be about. In these moments, sometimes my own faith languishes as I pause to question whether or not the things I hope for actually do exist. But, in time, I eventually return to the space where I again taste and see that love really does exist in the way that I understand it--and this is what gives me the courage to dream. I know this at the very core of my being, and this is the very bedrock on which my faith rests. Sometimes I just forget.

I hope that I will always dare to dream, even during my brief desert expeditions.

"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." ~Langston Hughes