The Dreamers of Dreams

November 15, 2019: The Dreamers of Dreams

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams…

 I've been rereading the marvelous book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli. It's probably my 3rd or 4th read-through. Here's what struck me this time:

"Why does heat go from hot things to cold things and not vice versa?"  I love questions like that, questions that make me consider the obvious or assumed. Questions asked by curious people: artists and engineers, scientists and reformers. Children of all ages. Why?

In one of my favorite Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory scenes, the brilliant Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka upbraids the obnoxious Veruca with the blistering couplet, “We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams.” With no more explanation they continue the factory tour.

The lines are from the poem Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy, whence we also inherit the phrase movers and shakers.  In addition to being a poet, O’Shaughnessy was a herpetologist (that’s reptiles and amphibians). Somehow that means I love his poem even more. Usually just the first three verses are quoted, but the entire poem deserves a careful read. His music makers, movers and shakers, are the dreamers of dreams. The creative people who change the course of the world with their visions, their experiments, their passion.

Heat goes from hot things to cold things because hot things are things with atoms and molecules moving around and bumping into each other faster that atoms and molecules in something cold. That’s the scientific answer. My friend, Ruth, suggested this explanation, “Maybe the heat goes to cold because passion goes to indifference (and not vice versa)”.

Yes!  Passion is active and vibrating and bumping into the settled indifference.  Pursuing a career or a person or a cause makes the difference.  Generally, opportunities are neutral. It is our acting upon them, the energy of saying yes, that fuels the future.

Passion flows toward indifference, but the passion can be hatred. And if the rest of us are indifferent, then those dreamers are changing our world toward fear.

 For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

 Last night I participated in restorative truth telling. Just pause for a second with that phrase and think how, implemented well, it could help us address so many familial and societal wounds.

The event was convened by the Community Remembrance Project, which was begun, in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative, to recognize the legacy of lynching and racial terror in Greenville Country so that healing can occur. Last night we remembered the story of George Green who was lynched in November 1933. A panel discussed how the impact of racial terrorism vibrates to this day, in the lack of generational wealth in African American communities, in the lack of affordable housing and transportation, in the gentrification of traditionally vibrant African American communities.

Not so long ago it was normal for white people to consider themselves superior to people of other races. It was normal for men to consider themselves superior to women, and for some women to agree.  Not so long ago, white Christians preached that this was the way God wanted it to be.  A lot of people assumed that the world could not be otherwise.

 But in every age the curious people ask questions.

 How does a gravitational field work? Woman, where are your accusers? What happens if a photograph is exposed to a flash of light during development? But who do you say that I am? Ain’t I a woman? Who is my mother; who are my brothers? How can we restore nitrogen to cropland? Peter, do you love me?

 A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible seeming —

There have been a lot of reformers in God’s name. Some try to maintain divisions, to keep the status quo for the next generation of power-holders.  They know that once people get a taste of liberty, or equality, well, it’s hard to get them to agree to inferiority again. It’s an understandable status quo fear.

Still today, some white people consider themselves superior to people of other races. Some Christians consider themselves superior to people of other religions. Some men consider themselves superior to women.  The good news is that now, thanks to countless brave men and women of all races and religions, we know that this is neither normal nor true. And we know that the world can ever more reflect the fullness of God’s dream of wholeness. Of justice and peace. Of room and nourishment for all. Of Thanksgiving and abundance. And of the Advent message of transformation coming in unexpected, unusual, not-normal ways.

 How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

 We need the movers and shakers to help us envision and enact God’s vision for the universe.

God’s liberty to the captives, God’s justice for the oppressed, and equality for all God’s children.  A vision with no place for hatred or trumped-up superiority. 

Those of us with the dreams of equality must stand up to the voices of hatred. And we music-makers must confront the voices of indifference, of pessimism and doubt, of the way it’s always been. God calls us to abundant life, for all God’s creatures. Humans working together for affordable housing; atoms and molecules vibrating in space.

We know that heat goes from the hotter thing to the colder thing. But here’s where it gets even more interesting.  It’s not impossible for heat to go from cold to hot. It’s just statistically much more probable that heat goes from hot to cold. The fast molecule more likely collides with the cold molecule and leaves a little energy, which warms up the cold molecule.

 If you’ve survived the Physics and are still with me, here’s the big payoff.  Time.

 Savor this astonishing and beautiful sentence from Mr. Rovelli. “The fundamental phenomenon that distinguishes the future from the past is the fact that heat passes from things that are hotter to things that are colder.”  In other words, the flow of heat is the only thing that indicates the direction of time.

 And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted.
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow.
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

We stand on the shoulders of the ones who dreamed before. Who shared their song and made a place for new dreams. Time like an ever-rolling stream…

Einstein’s general theory of relativity is considered “the most beautiful of theories” for its paradoxical simplicity and sweeping predictions. Bernhard Riemann wrote the mathematical equation that describes Einstein’s discovery: that space and gravitational field are the same thing. Mr. Rovelli encourages us to grapple with the mathematics to understand the equation, which I cannot claim that I have done. But as with all difficult and new things, he assures us that “the reward is sheer beauty and new eyes with which to see the world.”

 But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see..

 What dreams will you dream in God’s name?