Dream a little dream for you…

I am thinking and pondering with intense focus this morning.

A dangerous thing, especially when you’re trying to meditate and not think.

Thinking about yesterday’s post.

My love of words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, scribbling, writing, sharing!

About how many of us grow passions during our short lives on this earth.  How desires sprout like daffodils pushing green stalks from rich spring soil.  How we want to share this and this and this with the world–here, here is my talent, my gift, my love!

Dreams of egrets

And how the world takes so many of our loves with a sniff, with a toss of its uncaring head, and turns away.  How our precious loves are so often not supported with praise and admiration.  How our tentative buds are not seen for the beautiful blooms which may someday flower in our lives.

How many dreams wither on the vine from lack of inner and outer support?

How many times do we turn away from our baby dreams and look for something else because we’re convinced our initial efforts are bad, wrong, awful, oh-so-horrible, not as good as his or hers, pathetic, OK but not marvelous?

Shadows of dreams

They say a caring teacher with a discerning eye and loving heart can nurture a tentative vocation with simple words of support.

How many of us have garnered that support for our dreams?

How many of us have given our baby dreams that much inner support?

Support of dreams

Probably the reason I love to write is that my mom listened for hours and hours to my childhood stories.  She cared enough to let her child share tentative sentences, silly paragraphs, imperfect expression.

She said, “Oh, this is good, Kathy!” and didn’t little Kathy beam in absolute joy and return to her desk to write again, to find more words to share with Mom, to follow that tiny seed of growing joy into more and more fruition?

Dreams of young girls

The same with my photography.  When I picked up a camera three years ago–oh heck, who knows when that was?–appreciative encouragement provided impetus to continue, to develop technique, to deepen into the skill.

While canaries never sing sweet songs in my heart when taking photos (like they do when writing words) I have enjoyed learning to see better through the camera’s eye.  Others say they like the pictures, perhaps love a certain photo, and there’s more desire to explore, to learn, to share.

Spread your pink wings! Fly, fly!

Simple words of encouragement mean so much to people.

Martin Prechtel, part-Native American and Swiss, trained as a Mayan shaman, a fierce writer who loops sentences in circular spirituality and writes books with impossible titles like “Long Life Honey in the Heart” and “Secrets of the Talking Jaguar” once hissed at our writing class in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, that we must never, ever, ever discourage the dreams of our young people.  Nothing is more sacred than the dreams of youth.  Never mind that they may fail.  Never mind that the dreams don’t sound practical or logical or safe.  Dreams are precious gifts from the Spirit.  Foster them with your every breath.

Sadly, I have not always followed his advice, not for myself or my children.  Sometimes I try to encourage dreams toward practicality or security or logic.  Sometimes, I’ve even inadvertently squashed dreams like our unsuspecting feet murder insects as we walk in the woods.

Let us be wise nurturers of dreams, shall we?

Yet, I try imperfectly to be a dream planter, a dream mother, a dream auntie.  I attempt to share words of encouragement and delight.  I attempt to see the imperfect sprout as an instrument of possibility, a growing light, an opening of the heart.

Let us not forget today to keep our eyes open for emerging dreams.  When we witness them rising in ourselves, let us say–over and over again–“You can do it!  You can succeed!  You can grow your way past brambles and prickly burdock and feasting moths and no rain and burning sun!  Don’t let your imperfect expression stop you.  You can prosper.  You can find the glowing white pearl in the oyster’s clamped shell.  You can find the pot of gold beneath your glimmering rainbow.  You can do it!  You can do it!”

Even if the world refuses to support us–we can support ourselves.  Throw our arms around ourselves, hug ourselves, clap to ourselves, cheer wildly, pound the bleachers with our accompanying presence.

From the aura of our own inner praise, we’ll have plenty leftover to be that teacher for others, that encourager, that nurturer of baby-dreams, toddling-dreams, learning-to-walk dreams.

At the heart of every baby dream a chrysalis lies motionless, slumbering.  When time ripens, it emerges with butterfly wings to sip the sweet nectar of its blooming rainbow totality and it’s enough, always enough.

Dream a little dream for you