Impossible dreams . . .

Dreaming Impossible Dreams - Tilting at Windmills

In the Jerusalem Bible, which is my favorite translation of the Bible, we are told in Acts 2: 17, 

• In the last days -- the Lord declares -- I shall pour out my Spirit on all humanity. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, your old people dream dreams.

Yes, old people can dream dreams - not just young people - and women, as well as men. (That's one reason I like this translation of this passage.)


Not all dreams can be realized, of course. We all know that - but on my present personal quest, I am trying to find out just where the limits are as to what might still lie ahead for me. Tennyson's Ulysses has caught my imagination, and I stand with the aged Ulysses looking ahead, and not behind, knowing that I don't want "to rust unburnished." I want to "shine in use." I want to explore that "untraveled world" seen through the arch of my own experience, that world whose "margins fade" as I move through life.


But unlike Ulysses, I am not bored with what I have. I love what I have! 

There is not a day of my life I have not stood in wonder at what I have been given. I treasure every scrap of my life - which is why I keep it all, my graduation dress from high school, my wedding dress, my grandfather's vest, my children's baby shoes, my mothers' crocheted dress - all lying neatly folded and labeled my cedar chest. Family portraits are scattered here and there on table-tops and dressers in every room;  my files are still packed with treasured letters and cards from family members and students. The trees in my yard are carefully pruned and trimmed by dear Tom Larkin to keep me safe in my corner of the forest. The Pacific coast is only a short drive away and I go there often.


But now I am faced with choices - to go on as I am, live out what I have always assumed was the life I have been given, or to allow myself to be drawn to a very different life, full of many challenges, and one for which I am clearly too old! 


No matter where we live, or in what state of life, we are all called to detachment in one sense or another. We may not cling too closely to anything, no matter how dear, no matter how valued. I have tried to approach life's inevitable losses with a willingness to give back what I have been given. Every change in my life - whether of place to live or position held or beloved person whom I must leave behind or who will leave me - has been a new challenge: to let go, to grieve, and to go on. Because ultimately we must let go of everything and know that only one thing matters: union with God, the destiny for which we were created, for which the universe itself was created.


So one more time in my life I am experiencing a call to let go of the familiar, the known, the beloved - and trust that I will be once again be blessed in whatever lies ahead. Now I don't know if this letting go requires only the willingness to let go or the need to actually make practical and factual changes in my location and life style. It will take time to know that. But I have heard an inner call to give back what I have been given - and I am trying to be faithful to that call. 


The sisters here at the IHM Motherhouse are also hearing a call - to explore a new vision about the future of religious life, new emerging forms of religious life. The life of today's apostolic sisters - those who go into the world to serve its needs (as opposed to the older, more traditional contemplative, cloistered life of sisters in the past, who lived in enclosure) is only a couple hundred years old! It was once a "new form" They don't know what new emerging forms of religious life look like, they tell me, until people like myself bring the call they are hearing to them so that these calls can be mutually discerned.


The sisters mounted an art show recently: all pastels. Hearing that my favorite of these was the one of Don Quixote, the artist, Sr. Joan Lowell,  whose ministry was that of an art therapist, made a gift of it to me. 


The other sisters tell me it's fitting - that I have spent the month with them tilting at windmills. So I will be carrying with me on the plane an image of Don Quixote and I will be hearing the strains of a song about an impossible dream.