The Prayers of a Dreamer

Mistake #2,041: I sometimes try to recruit God as my spiritualized insurance carrier.

I charge him with making sure the things I draw stability and inspiration from—ideas, opportunities, relationships etc.—are never disrupted.

Please preserve the lives and health of the following people or projects…(long diatribe that even bores God follows).

These pleas, if I’m honest, are less about the well being of others (sorry others) and more about me tightening my fist around all the things I’ve decided are “necessary” for life to feel good and okay and on track. They’re my awkward, backward way of asking God not to touch my personal little heaven.

But a little while back, in one really sane moment, I decided that requests like these–designed purely to protect my own familiarity and feelings of security–are warm and fuzzy heresy. It’s particularly bold-faced heresy too because it’s like calling up God just to tell him you think maybe you can manipulate a better result than he can.

So…I decided to open up the vaults of my heart, the creaky shafts of my faith, and learn to ritually say the opposite: I welcome you to have access to everything I value…even if that means your plan involves things shifting way from me; even if it means losing what I have come to feel I need.

This means houses and cars.
Career paths and bank accounts.
The way I spend my time.

And, more difficultly,
It means the evolution of friendships I hold dear.
It means the ideals I’ve nurtured since childhood.
It means the future of the little boy that calls me “Mwah Mwah”—and blows a kiss every time he says it.

This is a tiny, fledgling attempt at ritual surrender, a stab at disciplined allegiance, the act of a dysfunctional servant like King David—who said, after he screwed up: “Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.”

My remake goes more like this: “Let me fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into my own hands.”

This is the kind of occasional wisdom that I think helped David win God’s heart. (He was called a man after God’s heart.) And above all the other things in life I’d like to do (and believe me, there’s a LIST), winning God’s heart is the thing I WANT MOST.

I think those are the better prayers for a dreamer anyways.

The mark of a true dreamer isn’t just capacity and skill sets, careful craftsmanship, big vision. The mark of a true dreamer is the ability to suspend your own feather-weight ideas to channel dreams that are bigger than you…bigger than your friends…the real mystery-stuff behind this world and the next.