The Power of a Dream

May we all be dreamers beloved. The scriptures tell us of dreams and of the dreamers who dreamed them. In each instance it brought about change, not only to the dreamer but to their world around them. Today we celebrate the life of perhaps the greatest dreamer of the mid-2Oth century, Martin Luther King Jr. His "I Have a Dream" speech of August 1963 represented a defiant political stance couched in religious rhetoric. The address to the nation was presented as a dream:

"I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! . . . I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the L*rd shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together".

Walter Brueggemann writes in a teaching,"Surely there is something in this speech that cannot be captured by political pragmatism or dismissed as a political stratagem. King’s dream was a gift of imagination from beyond the realm of political realism. And if we say "from beyond," then clearly it is something like a dream that carries a message from the holy. The substance of the dream is a world other than the one near at hand. There is indeed an otherness to the dream, for King is able to imagine a world that is radically discontinuous with the one we see around us. It is this imagined otherness to which the vulnerable and the oppressed appeal, an otherness to which the rulers of this age have no access and which they characteristically seek to critique or censor.

King’s dream was the product of study, of suffering and of long-term nurture in the black church. But perhaps it came to him in a moment in the night, like his kitchen experience as described by Taylor Branch:

King buried his face in his hands at the kitchen table. He admitted to himself that he was afraid, that he had nothing left, that the people would falter if they looked to him for strength. Then he said as much out loud. He spoke the name of no deity, but his doubts spilled out as a prayer, ending, "I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone." As he spoke these words, the fears suddenly began to melt away. He became intensely aware of what he called an "inner voice" telling him to do what he thought was right. Such simplicity worked miracles, bringing a shudder of relief and the courage to face anything. It was for King the first transcendent religious experience of his life. . . . For King, the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of religion was not a grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience -- something that opened up mysteriously beyond the predicaments of human beings in their frailest and noblest moments.
(Parting the Waters, 1988)

King’s dream, like every dream, is not simply the sign of a wish or projection but is the intrusion of God into a settled world. It has a holy intensity that reaches back into generations of suffering; it is a holy intrusion that reaches forward in sanity, continuing to generate a restless uneasiness with the way things are until the dream comes to fruition and a new world is enacted. The dream connects political possibility and religious authority in such a way as to be beyond critical argument or political control. That dream continues to reverberate and be generative among us because its cadences are not those of reasoned discourse but of an elusive piety, perhaps the favorite dialect of the biblical G*d.

Dream interpretation, so Jewish in its imaginative attentiveness, pertains to psychological matters and the reality of repression. But it is not limited to those concerns. Dreams concern larger realities and possible futures. There are many voices in the night, not all of them noble. Among them, however, is the voice of the Holy G*d, who "plucks up and tears down" what we have trusted, who "plants and builds" what we cannot even imagine.

We do not forgo the use of reason; but we know in our own troubled context that our best reason has around it -- in, with and under it -- gifts of the "otherness" that make for newness. Our technological achievements require and permit us to learn again what the community of faith has known -- and trusted -- from the outset: there is something outside our controlled management of reality which must be heeded.

Enjoy this fantastic study on Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a Dream" speech.

http://www.hillel.org/jewish/textstudies/special/mlk.htm
Beloved, HaShem has a dream for all of his people. As we say in Grace after Meals, “When the L*RD reverses the captivity of Zion, we shall feel as if dreaming”. Chapter 2:28-32 from the Book of Joel written somewhere between 835-805 BCE.,reads alot like our parsha this week about the plagues of Exodus, as terrifying as it all sounds, then as now HaShem has made a covenant with His people, as we pray in our morning prayers, a covenant that can not be breached.

Joel 2:28-32
The Day of the L*RD
28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.

29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

30 I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.

31 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the L*RD.

32 And everyone who calls
on the name of the L*RD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the L*RD has said,
among the survivors
whom the L*RD calls.