Native American Ministries

A Seventeen Year Old With a Dream

As a bright eyed teenager I had a dream to become a professional bass player. Back then, though, I did not know about the importance of developing a vision. I simply had a dream. It was a dream, however, with legs. I was on the run to make it come true. Within two years of first picking up the instrument, I had progressed to the point where I had outgrown the teaching abilities of two of my instructors and, after returning home from trip to Colorado the summer of 1976, I was to begin lessons with a very gifted instructor in Des Moines, Iowa.

Instead, I came home from Colorado with third degree burn scars over sixty percent of my body and the first two digits of all of my fingers amputated.

Dreaming Beyond The Trial 

At some point, everyone faces at least one severe trial in their life. In those moments of crisis it often seems as though the world should pause and acknowledge the pain and grief. It doesn’t. Life goes on, with or without a person. These are the times when life-defining choices are made. One can choose to simply dream of what was, or what could have been and let life get on without them, or they can choose to cease the opportunity to dream a new with the will and determination to make it happen, i.e., to dream beyond the trial.

Defining Vision

There is little difference between a vision and a dream. Obviously I am not talking about the kind of dreams we experience during sleep. I am referring to the kind of dream where eyes are wide open envisioning possibilities. Dreams with legs and a clear plan of action constitute vision.

A simple definition of vision is the ability to make a plan for the future. Put a plan in action, energize it with passion, and face without flinching the inevitable challenges that come with doing God’s work, and you will see your vision materialize. Far too many visionary plans are quelled in deference to the opinions of others, succumb to the fear of failure, or are put back to sleep because of a lack of faith in the Vision Castor that gave birth to them in the first place. Anatoli Boukreev, one of my mountaineering icons, described what drove him to fulfill his vision of climbing all of the eight thousand meter peaks in the Hymalayas without oxygen. His description beautifully summarizes why we are so passionate about helping reservation pastors fulfill their visions.

Anatoli said, ” I want to believe that the roads [visions] we choose to follow in life depend less on economic problems, on political battles, on the imperfections of our external world, and more on our internal calling. An inner voice compels us to go into the mountains, to the heights above the clouds, breaking new trails. The fathomless sky and sparkling summits with their grandeur and mystery will always appeal to that part of humanity that loves beauty. This is and will always be their magnetic power. They exist free of the petty vanity and trivial worldly aggravations that cloud our experience of the present moment and shadow our view of the beautiful and eternal. God inspired vision is beautiful and eternal.

T.E. Lawrence, in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, states it this way:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

Vision is a dream with legs. By supporting the vision of Native American Ministries, you play an integral role in helping this ministry resource the vision of reservation pastors.