Do you have dreams, thoughts that float around and maybe don't seem to connect or make any sense in the big scheme of things? That has been happening to me, all my life. I heard a call to ministry as a tween and followed that passionately. As one high school classmate wrote, my "calling was quite clear, she traipsed off to the east." I studied for a religious career, then came to a seemingly dead end. So I studied family systems to begin some type of counseling, and ended up making my living as a artist and business woman for a while. Later I was surprised by an offer to move hundreds of miles from family and it ended with my ordination as a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. After years in the pastorate I am studying as a counselor and have started to have dreams about putting it all together.
Faith, I told my daughter today, is not about thoughts as in beliefs, but rather about thoughts that are creative and trust that the creative forces would come together to make sense of the world, and our lives. It is about stepping out when we cannot see the road ahead, but we hear the song on the wind and we follow.
The song on the wind has been coming to my ear for years but recently there is an interesting harmonization. Conversations have come together with pieces like a quilt. Craftspersons and artisans have shown me some of the potential to micro businesses. In this time of joblessness that was significant. Over dinners I heard dreams of others to help the outcasts of our society. Bits and Pieces coming together.
Right now I volunteer as a chaplain and bereavement counselor for a hospice. People at the end of life get rid of the trappings and get down to basics, dreams unfulfilled, regrets and guilt, hopes and dreams. We cannot put things off. Now is the moment we have. It reminds me of an old Finnish proverb "Yesterday is a memory, Tomorrow a dream, Today is a gift, that is why we call it the Present." [I know it is probably not just Finnish.]
My present is planning for my dream. I am looking for expertise, assistance, donations of all sorts.
Soon I will be helping the felons and others make a living though a project (yet to be named) that will have a Katie's Kitchen and Luther's Table, a retreat/Acts 2 community, and a small manufacturing business called House Quilts [(TM) (c) pending] where we make the smaller version of the "barn quilt" and custom make, or production create 2'x2', 4'x4' or the full sized 8'x8' building decorations popular in about 25 states.
This is a non-profit venture, for reaching out and caring. It is time for my work of generativity (had to add a little psychology there).
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