day 12 - death of the wish dream

"The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more that the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

i realized the other day this is truly what i am grieving - the death of THE wish dream, yes, the death of my own wish dreams, but the fact that ALL wish dreams must die... i just can't seem to stomach a world or a church, or a community where it's all just the nitty, gritty of life - and no hope for something grand, something whole, something that changes everything. i know that my wish dream of community, that group that met weekly needed to die, it was unhealthy and could have even become an idol of sorts, it makes me sad, but i can grieve that and move on. it's the death of the large hope, the big, glorious picture that i just can't seem to be able to stomach...

i realized also that this coincided with the death of my calling. i know that the two were linked somehow. i feel adrift, purposeless. as discouraged as i was after leaving bible college, being told that the fields were ripe for harvest and liam and i banging our heads on the door of every ministry we could find over and over and over again, a whole decade of disappointment and rejection.

i had such big dreams, such high hopes, so MANY ideas... but as DB says, better to be shattered, to be disillusioned, because god forbid, community couldn't bear it... but i don't know why. this echos the cry of my heart from yesterday - why isn't god big enough for this? why couldn't he dream bigger NOW, yeah, i get it, kingdom come... blah, blah, blah... but my wish dream was real and was going to feed people, and teach them better, healthier ways to be in THIS world, right NOW. so instead i collapse instead of community. okay, you win.