Dear Friends,
Last week I had a dream that I went to a funeral, and I was with a baby. Hope and new life are present in an oddly for many of us during this unprecedented time of death, destruction, genocide, famine, ecosystem collapse, fires, and floods. My dream is both personal and comes for all of us. The gift and wisdom of this dream teaches us that amidst death and destruction, God calls us to create new life, remain open to experience new visions of an ecological civilization, create new kinds of church with dream honoring and artwork, and learn new ways to do biodynamic ways of growing healthy food, all as we commit to new ways to live in loving community.
We are excited to announce that we are having an opening celebration and blessing of the new Dream Incubation House and the Our Lady of Guadalupe Barn Mural honoring the imaginal realm of visionary experience and dreams. What a fitting time to honor dreams and visions on All Saints Day and especially with the Mexican traditions of Day of the Dead. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a uniquely Mexican visionary story that shares the universal truth that out of death God calls us to new life. We invite the Spirits of our loved ones on the other side to join us for this threefold honoring of dreams, visions and death. Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Black Madonna of the Americas came in a vision five hundred years ago with a call to rebuild the church. She, Our Lady is here calling us to rebuild a church of Spirit today. How? She has called us at Church for Our Common home to build a new kind of Manger church dedicated to the human family and the natural world living in close love and harmony, a church that replaces the old church too often co-opted by Empire and the world view of dominance and materialism. She calls us to celebrate the new world view brought with physics and process theology that honors relationships and dances in the interconnected web of life. She needs a church that honors dreams and visions as gifts from the God and who assures us that God is our beloved merciful companion who feels our suffering. She wants a church and ministry that explores eco burial as we overcome our fear of death, a church that invites Earth Crisis Support Groups and Potluck Parties as a way to create loving community where all people are welcome. God calls us to wake up to the bad news today as well as the good news, both death and life. The God of love is always with us. We are not alone. May we love another as Jesus loved us. That means we love anyone who shows up.
Death and sleep are both a state of consciousness beyond the boundaries of space and time. In prayer we ask God to be with us each night as we travel to an expanded space time awareness. Each night we are invited to prepare to sleep and dream as a kind of rehearsal for our own death. There is nothing to fear, we are told again and again by mystic in our Christian tradition and many ancient wisdom traditions.
God communicates with us every night in our dreams. After the ceremony, blessing and opening in early November we will offer reservations for people to come stay in the Dream Incubation House with the intention of honoring their dreams as sacred gifts. Dreaming can be a meaningful spiritual practice enabling us to know ourselves as we listen to God calling us to be our fullest selves in order to live our lives to the fullest and lead lives of service to God's creation.
Special thanks to the dozens of volunteers who have helped to paint the mural as well as create a sculptural eco-natural building compost toilet. Special thanks to Erin Shepard and Antigone for leading our eco nature building workshop and everyone who helped build our beautiful earthen compost toilet. Toilets are a common dream symbol about the collective and our needs to express ourselves. Thank you to every dreamer who has shared a dream, every artist young and old who have painted, roses, dragonflies, stars and leaves on the trees, everyone who mixed dirt and straw and got covered in mud. Thanks to Max and Angel for building the scaffolding and everyone who helped clean paint brushes and offered encouragement along the way. Every stroke of paint, every act of generosity and service is a blessing and has been a loving contribution and we are eternally grateful.