Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 Lord, you know everyone’s heart. |
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| Daydream Believing | ||
O God of love, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth,
come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen. |
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I once came across a quotation from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. that I saved. Vonnegut said, “"People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God." It caught my attention -- perhaps because of my impatience with the lectionary in Eastertide. I don’t know the context in which Kurt Vonnegut said it. I really don’t even know what he meant – whether it was a positive or negative critique. The word ‘preachments’ doesn’t sound so positive – but neither does ‘daydreaming’ – not if you spent your elementary school years being scolded by teachers for staring into space!
But today, with all those teachers behind me, I want to suggest that there is inherent value in daydreaming (as long as you are not operating heavy equipment or a vehicle). There is inherent value in daydreaming especially if you are sitting in a chair in this chapel. Daydreaming offers opportunities for fun, adventure, creativity, deep insight and healing. It improves efficiency in decision-making, strategizing, and emotional regulation according to computer analysts who have developed artificial intelligence routines that are programming computers to daydream! According to the website “WebMD,” daydreaming can help you relax, manage conflict, maintain relationships, boost productivity, cement beliefs and values, and relieve boredom! The author of the WebMD entry concludes that, “we should nix the negative stereotypes and become, in the words of The Monkees, ‘daydream believers.’”
Maybe the author of the Gospel of John somehow knew that there is inherent value in daydreaming about God. The long long passages from the farewell discourse certainly seem to promote it! Verna Dozier, the great Episcopal Church Theologian, wrote a book called The Dream of God. I love the ambiguity of the title. It can mean our dream of God – it can mean God’s dream of us. In it, she defines ministry as “commitment to the dream of God. The world [she says] is not as God would have it be….[and] we have lost the capacity to dream great dreams.”
In my daydream believing, this long farewell reminds me of the love poem by e e cummings, called, “i carry your heart.” In my daydream believing I imagine that Jesus knew that God says it to each one of us and longs to hear it back from us, and longs for us to say it to one another – friend and stranger. In my daydream believing, I imagine that this is what Jesus meant in the prayer of his farewell discourse. The poem goes like this:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you |
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| here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart |
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| i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) | ||
Jesus says, “I speak these things so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” My hunch is that this prayer is addressing a community that is not feeling Jesus’ joy made complete in themselves. If they were already feeling his joy made complete in themselves, Jesus would have been praying another prayer – perhaps thanksgiving for complete joy or perhaps asking for something else altogether. But here he’s asking for something that the community does not have. And there’s a way to think about complete – perfect – full – in a moment, even while holding in tension the recognition that all is not reconciled, that we carry grief and pain of loss in our hearts, that we often feel vulnerable and unprotected, and our truth is often all mixed in with untruth, sincerity mixed with insincerity, frankness and candor mixed with evasion and deception. Even with all of that, Jesus’ prayer is “…That they may have my joy made complete in themselves.”
What joy is started that Jesus longs to complete, to make perfect and full in you? How is this prayer of Jesus a prayer for you? What joy is started in this parish that longs to be complete, to be made perfect and full? How is this prayer of Jesus a prayer for Emmanuel Church? What might be different if we renew our commitment to the dream of God for joy made complete in us and all around us?
| Website.Emmanuel@gmail.com | 15 Newbury St., Boston MA 02116 | 617-536-3355 |