1 We Have a Dream: Inspiring the Future We Hope to Live In Delivered by Ben Wallace at First Unitarian Church of Omaha on January 15, 2012
“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
What do you Dream about? And I don’t mean what do you think about when you are asleep but what you truly DREAM about. The kind of utopian dream that when you think about it, it literally changes the way that you feel for that moment. Maybe it is so powerful that it brightens, your day, your week, or even your year. I am going to ask everyone to take a moment and close your eyes. Think about that dream that is everything you could ever want. Who is in your dream? Where is your dream? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? Take a moment and get lost in that dream until it almost starts to feel real. Now open your eyes and be conscious of how you feel? Do you feel different than you did a few minutes ago? I believe that just having a dream changes us. It changes how we think about the future but more importantly it changes how we feel. That emotion is the difference between a simple goal and a Dream. I think it is that power of emotion that attracts me to the concept of dreams and one of the reasons why Dr. King’s “I have a Dream” speech has always resonated with me. I believe that Emotion is the foundation of the things that attract us and I think sometimes we don’t even realize it. A great example of this is the effect of music in movies. Some of the greatest movies of all time have one thing in common, they have great music in them. In fact the foundation of movies didn’t start with an amazing plot or dialogue, it started with music.
2 Remember those old Charlie Chaplin movies? The most memorable part of for me was the piano music. What are the greatest movies of all time? Star Wars? The Godfather? Ben Hur? Gone with the Wind? I can tell you that the one thing that most of my favorite movies have in common is memorable music. Last of the Mohicans, A River Runs through It, Dances with Wolves, Crimson Tide, The Rock, Inception, they all have very moving scores that we aren’t even aware of sometimes during the movie. We are so engrossed in the emotion of the movie, driven by the music, that we forget that we are even sitting in a theater seat.
I have always
thought of movie scores as pure emotion translated into sound. Have you ever watched a movie with the sound muted? It just isn’t the same experience. On the other hand, have you ever listened to a movie score or soundtrack at home or in your car without the visuals? Sometimes the music can be powerful even if you haven’t ever seen the movie. I believe that same difference exists between the standard thoughts or goals that we have in our everyday lives and the “Dreams” that we have. And the way that we talk about things, the labels that we use change the way that we view them and vice versa. What is your favorite food? Don’t you talk about it with a different tone of voice than you do your least favorite dish? Even that tone of voice comes from the emotions you are feeling as you think about something. Dr. King had a dream of a better world and it came through in the way he was talking about it because he was emotional about his hope for the future. But if you have a dream, it can’t just end there, you have to take action to get you closer to your dreams. When I was in college I was involved in student government. I got involved my freshman year because one of the people I knew in high school was involved and asked if I would be interested. I hadn’t ever been involved in student government before but it didn’t sound like a bad time so I accepted the offer to fill one of the open seats. Not long after that, I was in a committee meeting and we were talking about what to do for Martin Luther King Day. Being an
3 opportunist and a big fan of Denzel Washington and all of the wonderful community service that he did outside of his acting career, I joked about how cool it would be to try and get Denzel Washington to come and speak at our school for Martin Luther King Day. A few people chuckled at me but for some reason I decided to take the idea seriously. After the meeting I went online and worked to find out who is agent was, what company they worked for, and what their contact information was. I called the company, told them where I was calling from and that we were interested in having Denzel Washington come to speak at our school for Martin Luther King day. I got the agent’s email and sent them a follow up email message as well. After a few days I got a response back from their office that regretfully Mr. Washington was already booked for that day. I was disappointed and felt a little let down. At our next meeting I reported back to the group that although the idea of having Denzel Washington speak was a great idea, I had been in contact with his agent and he was already booked so he wouldn’t be able to come. After I finished talking not a peep was said from the dozen or so fellow students and advisors in the meeting. Most of them just stared at me with a look of amazement. They were flabbergasted that I had actually taken the idea seriously and done something about it. And was the first moment in my life that I realized that maybe you could accomplish anything you put your mind to. Even though I had “failed” at what I was trying to accomplish, I had inspired myself and the others in my committee to think bigger, to see “what was possible in a different light.” One of my favorite quotes from Gandhi is his saying “you must be the change you wish to see in the world.” I am sure it is a quote that we are all familiar with. However, I truly believe that these common words sell short what I think his real message was. It is the same message that Dr. King was motivated by. I have come up with another wording for that idea and it is this. “We must inspire the future that we hope to live in.” I think that this message has a couple of very important thoughts and meanings behind it. The first is the idea of inspiration.
4 Inspiration is the key to change. Who I am, what I say doesn’t literally change people. However if you or I can motivate each other in an emotional way, we can inspire each other. Inspiration is to an encouragement as a Dream is to a thought. The difference is the addition of an emotional component that resonates with the very essence of our humanity. As I think about inspiration and Dreams I think about the fact that Dreams seem to be of the most importance when success is not as abundant in our world. When the economy and overall prosperity of the world is threatened, it seems like we need Dreams more to give us hope, even if when the reality of that hope isn’t assured. No one talks the same about inspiration or dreams when success is expected. I think it is our human nature to be attracted to overcoming adversity because that positive emotion of hope means more. So what does it mean to have a Dream? What does it mean to “Inspire the future we hope to live in?” Why is it important to us? Why is it important to our community? Why am I even talking about Dreams today? Because what is possible is solely defined by what we believe is possible. Dreams are the window to possibilities that may have never existed before but certainly are achievable. One of my favorite quotes is by Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can do something or think you can’t do something, you are right.” Dreams are the most important kind of idea because they expand our understanding of possibility, inspire us to think bigger, and even test the boundaries of reality. Dreams are the keys to becoming everything we want to be as a person, a family, a community, a society, and as human beings. However, as important as having dreams are, even more important is having people around you to believe in that dream. Encouragement and community has everything to do with staying the course. I can tell you first hand.
5 When I was 21 years old, still in college I had the opportunity to attend the State of the World Forum for Emerging Leaders in Monterey Mexico. I had applied to be a student delegate and was notified in early January of 1999 that I had been chosen as one of 600 emerging leaders from 40 countries. I was excited about the conference, but I had an even bigger dream than just attending. One of the presenters at the conference was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, someone that I had been very intrigued and inspired by throughout my college studies due to his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. When I found out that I had been chosen I called my Mom to tell her about being chosen to go and to see about figuring out a way for me to get there and pay for the conference fee. It wasn’t going to be easy as money was tight having to pay for tuition as well as room and board in the residence halls. After I told her about the opportunity, I asked her if it might be possible for me to use the money that we had earmarked for the rest of my tuition that semester to pay for the flight to Monterey Mexico and the conference fee. After thinking about it for a minute she agreed. I told her about Archbishop Desmond Tutu being there and told her, “I am going to meet Desmond Tutu and shake his hand.” Without skipping a beat she said to me, “I know you will.” I went to the conference and was overjoyed at being immersed in a culture and language that was new to me along with the wonderful experience and message of the Forum. The theme was “Civic Participation: Building on the Millennium” and on top of being an amazing conference, it also had the distinction of being completely led, staffed, and funded by the Student Government at the Instituto Technologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterey. The Institute of technology and higher studies in Monterey Mexico. On the third day I listened to a discussion between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Lech Walesa, the first President of Post-communist Poland, both of who were Nobel Peace Prize
6 winners. After the session I went to try and locate Archbishop Tutu so that I could meet him. I walked around and finally found someone who was assigned to security for the event. I told him that I was looking for Desmond Tutu and wanted to meet him. He looked at me a little bit like I was crazy and said something to the effect of “sorry, he is in a press conference now and will be leaving directly afterward.” I was disappointed and frustrated and could have walked away, but I looked at the staff person and said, “listen, I have traveled all the way to this forum to meet him and it is very likely that this is the only chance in my entire life I will have to do that.” I must have seemed very pathetic, but after a minute of looking at me, probably trying to assess whether I was crazy or not, the staff person told me that he would be leaving in about 20 minutes and if I waited near the back entrance that he would be meeting his transportation there to take him directly to the airport. Well, it would be lying to say that I was less than ecstatic. I headed out to the exit that he had specified, taking with me a couple of the people I had gotten to know so far at the conference who knew all about my “Mission.” We got there and waited for 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 45 minutes, until almost an hour. I was starting to wonder if maybe I had missed him when the doors to the conference center opened up and a caravan of security and police came towards us with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the middle of them. I tried to get his attention, calling out his name and waving to him. As the crowd passed in front of me I kept shouting his name and held my hand up above the crowd to try and get his attention. As I did he looked towards me, then slowed down and held out his hand towards mine through the mob of security people. He grabbed my hand and all of the sudden the mob of security parted like the red sea and this tiny man all of 5 foot 2, stood in front of me with this big grin on his face. I would like to tell you that I remember what I said to him but that would be a lie. The actual moment seems like a blur and I just remember my heart pounding, briefly exchanging words, and taking a picture with him with my lanyard and backpack on.
7 Isn’t that a great story? I can tell you it is one of the most significant experiences of my life. But what is the point? Here is the point I want to make. Do you know what the most powerful part of that entire story is from my perspective today? It is that when I dreamt of meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the conference my Mom believed in me. She believed that I could do what I set out to do, the dream that I had. I realize now that none of that would have happened if my mother didn’t believe in me and support me enough to send me to Mexico to go to a conference with money that we didn’t really have in order to follow and achieve a dream. She didn’t know if I would really meet him or what I might even get out of the conference, but she believed in me and she always has. My point is that whether we are dreaming about a better future for our children or our political structure, or our community here at this church, it is just as important. No I would say it is even more important that not only do we have a dream for our community, but that we believe that we can achieve that dream. We must believe in ourselves, each other, and the power of wanting a better world to exist. We must truly want a better future and believe in that better future if we have any chance of inspiring it to come true. Recently I was asked to serve on the Senior Ministry Team here at First Unitarian Church to help lead and coordinate the Ministry Team of the church which is the part of our organization responsible for the “day to day” activities and programs such as Religious Education, Religious Services, as well as the Small Group Ministries such as the Youth Group, Green Sanctuary, Women’s Alliance, and all of the other programs that make up the core of our community here at First U. The Senior Ministry Team is made up right now of 5 of us and we coordinate the different areas of the church such as the Administration, Finance, Congregational Life, and
8 Building and Grounds. The long and short of it is that we have been tasked with leading the day to day operations of the church through the current transition period. As I have been working to wrap my head around this task I have been trying look at it from the perspective of a congregation member. What do I need right now to be inspired about where my church community is going? How do I feel about where it is today and the things that have happened over the last year? The truth is that as a congregation member this has been a hard year. We have been struggling with the transition to a new governance structure, have lost some key leaders and members of our church, and have been working through some challenges that have had an effect on our morale and our confidence in the direction of why our community is here and where it is going. I am positive that I am not the only one that feels this way. As church leaders, how do we work towards finding a way to heal ourselves and each other, keep our programs running and staffed, plan for the year to come, and Inspire a future that we will be proud to live in? This is what I came up with: We Dream. We need to dream about what our future looks like and share those dreams with each other. We need to acknowledge the pain and hurt that exists and allow room for it to be expressed. It is just as important to appreciate the pain people feel as it is to let ourselves believe that great things can happen. If we deny either side of this equation we are denying the importance of that emotion to our human experience and ability to move forward. You can’t appreciate the mountain top if you are blind to the valleys. I believe that this community has a bright future ahead of it. In order for us to figure out what that future looks like, we need to share our dreams with each other. That is where a minute of audience participation comes in. I am going to ask you to take a moment now and share your dream with us. You will find a piece of paper in your pew and it has a simple question on it.
9 What is your dream? Please do me a favor and take just a moment to write down your dream. If you could dream one thing for our community here, what would it be? And it doesn’t matter if you have been a member for 20 years, have been here for a month, or are just a visitor for the first time today. What would you like to see here in this church community? What would give you hope, keep you coming back, make you excited to tell someone about? I invite you to take that piece of paper, fold it in half, and put it in the offering plate when it comes by in a little while. This won’t make the world a better place by itself but it is the first step towards Inspiring the Future we hope to live in and I can tell you on behalf of all of the leaders at this church that no matter who you are or where you come from, we want you to be a part of that future. In the coming days, weeks, and months the Senior Ministry Team is going to be doing things to get a better sense of where things stand today, how people feel, what we need individually and as a community, and where we want to see this community go in the future. We are going to be planning a Community Forum next month tentatively scheduled for Saturday February 18th. This Community Forum will be a chance for each of us to talk with each other and learn about what is happening with our current programs, give our community members to express their thoughts, ideas, concerns, and perspectives on our community, as well as a chance to talk more about where we want to go as a church community in the coming months and years. It will be a chance for us to “check in” with each other, have discussion, have fun, share a meal, and talk about the things that matter to each of us. We are at a crucial transitional point in the life of our church. I believe and the Senior Ministry Team believes that the answers of where we need to go can’t just be a matter of us picking a direction and moving forward. We want to listen to the most important people in our church, the congregation, and work to structure, plan, and empower each other to move forward together. This transitional process isn’t going to be perfect and it isn’t going to be easy. But I can promise you that it is
10 going to be worth it. Just like Dr. King and the men and women who fought with him for a better world, I believe that We do have a dream and that we will see a better day. They key to our success will be caring for each other, listening to each other, and supporting each other. Together we can inspire a future that we will want to be a part of. Thank you very much.