First Dream, Then Do!

I once knew a guy who loved to sit at home and talk about all the places he wanted to go and things he wanted to do. He talked about going to Paris and walking along the Seine while finding the perfect place to set up a coffee cart that would cater to tourists. He would start by renting a little flat in the Latin Quarter, find the right immigrants to buy the coffee beans from, and set up a little roastery. The next week he’d be mentally traveling to Morocco, or Madagascar, or Madrid, where he would start a business, and like a mustard seed, it would grow into a large company that would one day split off into a chain of shops.

I had another friend in high school who dreamed of becoming a mystery writer. His parents gave him the space to dream but were always warning him to take a step too far. He set up his basement as if it belonged to a young Steven King or Agatha Christie. There were macabre posters on the wall and little figurines of death and mayhem scattered everywhere. His writing was very cinematic in style, and one could actually see the scenes as they unfolded in your mind’s eye. One day, while working with the YMCA, I got the idea that we could write a tale of knights saving humanity from evil. We could shoot it in a local wooded area, and I got permission from a local church to do the final scene in their sanctuary.

We set to work and finished the screenplay in a week. I then gave the script to the kids at the YMCA, and we set off to make costumes, memorize lines, and build swords. I taught them the rudiments of stage fighting and blocking, and we were off! My friend and I rented a camera and purchased a bunch of videotapes. We had a budget of $200, and we were going to be as frugal as we could with the money. I played the director, and my friend was the cinematographer and cameraman. We taped the whole thing in about a week and wrapped up at the church for the final night. We had done it. We had taken the seed of an idea, nurtured it, and made it grow.

I turned all the videotape over to my friend for editing because I knew enough that I didn’t know a thing about how to edit it down. That’s where the sprout foundered and died. My friend made many excuses as to why he couldn’t work on the project that we had so diligently seen through. As time went by, I would check in on him and the project, always wanting to know how I could assist. A week, three weeks, two months came and went. I dropped by his house to find he and his family had moved. He was gone, his writer’s lair was gone, and so were all the videotapes of the movie we created. He didn’t call, leave a note or utter a word. He was just… gone.

When we are young, life is full of energy and possibility. We are like a small seed that bursts forth from our shell and begins to grow. We are nurtured and fed by our parents and our environment. We learn the right way to do things. Then, when we want, we try the wrong way and find out that way will not work without paying a price.

Eventually, most of us are transplanted, much like the “crest of the cedar” that Ezekiel talks about. He writes, “Thus says the Lord: I, too, will take from the crest of the cedar… and plant it on a high and lofty mountain… It shall put forth branches and bear fruit and become a majestic cedar” (Ezekiel 17: 22-23). Once we learn the right way, the correct way to live, and the moral way, we must allow ourselves to be transplanted so we can grow tall and strong, face adversity, and prove not just to others but more so to ourselves who and what we are. Otherwise, we are simply a very lofty branch with no purpose and no future.

My first friend stayed in his place, always dreaming, always planning, but never doing. His branch stayed in the same place until eventually he passed away. I’ve heard my second friend relocated to a nearby state, where he became a law enforcement officer in a small town. I’ve heard through mutual friends he still dreams, he still tells a good yarn, but he does nothing with what he really wanted to do all those years ago. I’ve been told he never left the safety of the cocoon of his parents and lived with them until he was well into his forties, then worked his way through two or three wives and has alienated most people he had a fondness for over the years.

His “home,” his heart, always belonged to storytelling. But he was never allowed to fully pursue it by those who raised him. Every time he would sew his smallest of mustard seed in the ground, the ones who were supposed to raise him and let him grow would smother it. He has never known the joy of “it springs up and becoming the largest of plants and putting forth branches so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade,” as the Gospel of Mark wrote.

Look to our Biblical ancestors. Abraham left the comfort of his home to create a race of people. Moses, raised in opulence, left for the desert and returned to lead his people to the promised land. David left the comfort of being a shepherd to face a giant with five stones and win. We are all here not to cocoon and stay safe but to go forth and show who God is in the way we live our lives. This doesn’t mean we are all to become preachers and theologians. No. We are the “likeness and image of God.” We’re already His creation. We are already the seeds in the ground. It’s now up to us to listen to where He wants us to go, dream a little, and then go! Do! Be! Or we could just sit back, talk about it, rehash it, and stay safe. Never fulfilling God’s will for us.

So, what’s it going to be, you sitting on a couch dreaming, or you following the advice of a sports shoe slogan: “Just do it!”?