Fake Dream Or Real Community?

Doing a big, crazy, impossible bike ride taught me something about following dreams.

For perhaps three years I cranked around the same familiar streets and trails near my house, imagining what it would be like to do a cross-country ride. I planned and schemed and visualized. Eventually I even started talking about it. I loved it, this idea of a dream of a ride. And it was cool, because as long as it was just an idea I could just savor it and smile about it. I could ride around my nice safe, trails clinging to my nice, safe, perfect idea of a dream because…

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I didn’t actually have to DO anything about it.

Bob Goff’s book title reveals the dirty little secret: LOVE DOES. It’s nice to have an idea, but nothing happens until you act. The idea of a dream means little until you decide to follow it. And the moment you act, the moment you begin to follow, crazy things happen. The perfect idea melts away as reality clunks you on the head,

Lots of people love the idea of doing a big, crazy bike tour. Just like they like the idea of writing a book, or leaving that dead-end job for something more fulfilling. Or the idea of mentoring a kid or volunteering somewhere. Great ideas, but they’re just fantasies until you make a commitment and get some skin in the game, knowing that it won’t happen quite the way you imagined.

At the FREEDOM TOUR we’ve got this vision, this grand idea of building a community around a bike tour. I was thinking about how easy it is to fall in love with the vision of this wonderful idyllic community in which everyone shares deeply and authentically and seldom is heard a discouraging word.

That’s all good, until you try to have an actual community–you know, with actual people. The imperfect ones, the kind with blind spots and hangups and past failures. The kind that get tired and grumpy, that have other things on their schedules and forget you’re the center of the universe. In other words, broken people just like you.

And if you forget to love those broken people (and to let them love you) more than you love your grand vision of a beautiful community, the whole thing’s going to collapse. Because community is hard and messy, and the only way it works is if you love each other in the midst of the mess.

I learned that I can’t have it both ways. I can cling to the idea of the dream, as lovely as it is, and pretend.

Or I can follow the dream, do the hard work, choose hope, love the amazing folks in this remarkable circle, and trust God for the outcome.

 

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