Something Good and
Beautiful and Fragile
Shared Dreams of Beloved Community
"They do not yet know the sweetness, the loveliness of fellow-feeling and compassion. Compassion not just for nearest and dearest but for all."
So writes philosophy professor Doug Corbitt in a posting on Facebook after a disappointing election evening. In trying to understand how so many Americans could vote for a man who, in Corbitt's words, is "dishonest, cruel, and self-serving," he speculates that their blindness is partly a matter of knowledge. "They do not yet know the sweetness.
In my view the knowing to which he refers is not intellectual knowledge alone. It is the activity of being grasped in the heart by a hope, a dream, that is inherently compelling and beautiful, filled with a mythic power to inspire and attract. It is the dream of beloved community. The specifics of this dream are pretty clear. A beloved community is creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and good for the earth - with no one left behind. Pope Francis calls it an "integral ecology." Process theologians call it an "ecological civilization."
Many visionaries, well-known and unknown, have been grasped by this dream. Gandhi, Martlin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus for example, Jesus spoke of it as the basileia tou theou - a phrase which we often translate as the kingdom of God. The phrase can as easily be translated the community of compassion where the love of God rules in the heart of each and all as a state of affairs in which the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Dreams of beloved community can be dangerous, insofar as, when we are grasped by them, we so easily divide the world into two types: those of us to know the dream and those who don't. To some extent this is unavoidable. But the greatest of dangers is to violate the spirit of the dream and believe that those who are "wrong" are not worthy of respect, care, and listening or, if they have political power, to violate the spirit by allowing bitternesss and hatred to fill our hearts, Aware of the problem, Corbitt reminds us to avoid this trap. In his words: Something beautiful and good--something beautiful and good but very fragile--is lost if we nurture bitterness and hate and allow them to root and grow in our inmost selves.
Where do good dreams such as this come from? Open and relational theologians believe that they come from a deep and divine source, a cosmic dream-giver, God, who lures us by providing dreams by which our hearts are grasped. These dreams may be very personal, aimed primarily at finding wisdom for how we might live our individual lives. But they may also be social dreams, collectively shared, and which surface in many people simultaneously as a collective hope.
And how do we discover them? Not only at night, but in the course of daily life, when we meet somebody, a leader, who inspires the dream. He or she brings out the dream in us; or better inspires us to recognize the dream as already inchoate in our own lives. The leader becomes, as it were, a dream weaver.
And yet, as Sheri Kling makes clear below, we never weave our dreams alone. This is true even of dream weavers. We dream in relation to others and with their help. At some level we dream together, each enriching the dream of the other.
In the essay below Kling's focus is not on collective dreams of beloved community, but on more localized dreams within given organizations. She imagines Offices of Soul Development within businesses, civic groups, churches, and mosques, where people are encouraged to share and learn from one another's nighttime dreams.
Encouraged by Kling's essay, I find myself wondering, half playfully but half seriously, if the United States might not also need a Department of Soul Development. Or perhaps better, a Department of Shared Dreaming. Its task would be to help the citizens of America uncover and live into their dreams for themselves and for community with one another.
I also find myself wondering if those who vote 'the other way' don't themselves carry, somewhere in their hearts, the hope for beloved community, too, if only we listen to them in loving ways. They may think we are the enemy, and we might think the same of them. But we might also wonder if those who seem not to dream of beloved communty might actually have that dream, if only neglected or forgotten, somewhere in the depths of their psyches. In any case I suspect that, as a nation, we in the United States need to find opportunities for dreaming with one another, even those with whom we vehemently disagree. Perhaps, at a deep level, we are all grasped by the hope that touched Jesus's heart: a hope for something good and beautiful and fragile, and well worth living toward.
- Jay McDaniel, November 4, 2020
So writes philosophy professor Doug Corbitt in a posting on Facebook after a disappointing election evening. In trying to understand how so many Americans could vote for a man who, in Corbitt's words, is "dishonest, cruel, and self-serving," he speculates that their blindness is partly a matter of knowledge. "They do not yet know the sweetness.
In my view the knowing to which he refers is not intellectual knowledge alone. It is the activity of being grasped in the heart by a hope, a dream, that is inherently compelling and beautiful, filled with a mythic power to inspire and attract. It is the dream of beloved community. The specifics of this dream are pretty clear. A beloved community is creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and good for the earth - with no one left behind. Pope Francis calls it an "integral ecology." Process theologians call it an "ecological civilization."
Many visionaries, well-known and unknown, have been grasped by this dream. Gandhi, Martlin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus for example, Jesus spoke of it as the basileia tou theou - a phrase which we often translate as the kingdom of God. The phrase can as easily be translated the community of compassion where the love of God rules in the heart of each and all as a state of affairs in which the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Dreams of beloved community can be dangerous, insofar as, when we are grasped by them, we so easily divide the world into two types: those of us to know the dream and those who don't. To some extent this is unavoidable. But the greatest of dangers is to violate the spirit of the dream and believe that those who are "wrong" are not worthy of respect, care, and listening or, if they have political power, to violate the spirit by allowing bitternesss and hatred to fill our hearts, Aware of the problem, Corbitt reminds us to avoid this trap. In his words: Something beautiful and good--something beautiful and good but very fragile--is lost if we nurture bitterness and hate and allow them to root and grow in our inmost selves.
Where do good dreams such as this come from? Open and relational theologians believe that they come from a deep and divine source, a cosmic dream-giver, God, who lures us by providing dreams by which our hearts are grasped. These dreams may be very personal, aimed primarily at finding wisdom for how we might live our individual lives. But they may also be social dreams, collectively shared, and which surface in many people simultaneously as a collective hope.
And how do we discover them? Not only at night, but in the course of daily life, when we meet somebody, a leader, who inspires the dream. He or she brings out the dream in us; or better inspires us to recognize the dream as already inchoate in our own lives. The leader becomes, as it were, a dream weaver.
And yet, as Sheri Kling makes clear below, we never weave our dreams alone. This is true even of dream weavers. We dream in relation to others and with their help. At some level we dream together, each enriching the dream of the other.
In the essay below Kling's focus is not on collective dreams of beloved community, but on more localized dreams within given organizations. She imagines Offices of Soul Development within businesses, civic groups, churches, and mosques, where people are encouraged to share and learn from one another's nighttime dreams.
Encouraged by Kling's essay, I find myself wondering, half playfully but half seriously, if the United States might not also need a Department of Soul Development. Or perhaps better, a Department of Shared Dreaming. Its task would be to help the citizens of America uncover and live into their dreams for themselves and for community with one another.
I also find myself wondering if those who vote 'the other way' don't themselves carry, somewhere in their hearts, the hope for beloved community, too, if only we listen to them in loving ways. They may think we are the enemy, and we might think the same of them. But we might also wonder if those who seem not to dream of beloved communty might actually have that dream, if only neglected or forgotten, somewhere in the depths of their psyches. In any case I suspect that, as a nation, we in the United States need to find opportunities for dreaming with one another, even those with whom we vehemently disagree. Perhaps, at a deep level, we are all grasped by the hope that touched Jesus's heart: a hope for something good and beautiful and fragile, and well worth living toward.
- Jay McDaniel, November 4, 2020