Dreams

Lets dream out loud for a moment, shall we? What kind of a world do you dream of? Oh, I don’t mean dreams for a bigger house or more money in the bank; I am thinking of bigger dreams than that. I will go first to get us started. Lets see where this conversation takes us.

• I dream of a world that is safe for children; a world where they do not have to pick through garbage heaps looking for plastic or other bits of junk they can sell to recyclers in order to get food to eat.
• I dream of a world where every child has a roof over their head and a nice, clean, warm bed to sleep in; where they do not sleep in doorways, or cardboard boxes, or back alleys; where they do not wander the streets in fear.
• I dream of a world where children are not forced to become soldiers and taught to kill in order to stay alive themselves; where bombs do not fall on their homes at night or explode in the streets or marketplace during the day, where mommies and daddies, brothers and sisters always come home safely with all their limbs and parts intact.
• I dream of a world where children are free to play, and where play is an imitation of the healthy life they see around them; an imitation of caring mommies and daddies who themselves play and work to earn money to care for and provide for their children and others who depend on them.
• I dream of clean air for children to breathe, clean water for children to drink, and food that is not contaminated with pesticides, herbicides or growth hormones.
• I dream of a world where every child can go to school because there is a school for them to attend; a school that has paper and coloured pencils, books and teachers, and perhaps even computers that open windows onto the larger world of science and nature, mathematics and literature, God’s universe and beyond.
• I dream of a world where children are free to think about God and the miracles they see every day in the life that is around them; where they are free to wonder and contemplate what is, and what might be.
• All of this is a dream of a world where children themselves can dream, in a safe healthy environment, of all the great things they can and will do in God’s world.

For the most part, this dream is already a reality for my grandchildren and others where I live. It is not so for everyone. This is the dream we work for; a world of justice and peace, because we can’t have one without the other.

So that is my dream this morning. Now it is your turn. What kind of world do you dream of?

Posted by Carman