Sometimes a Dream Comes True

With not a little hope and daring, I called this my Year of Dreams. Included in the list of wishes: meet poet Sam Hazo.

Well, sometimes a dream comes true. While at the Jubilee conference I met Sam over at Carlow University, where he leads the International Poetry Forum (pic of Carlow below). Stay tuned for more from Sam this Friday in Random Acts of Poetry at High Calling Blogs. Also, Marcus Goodyear has promised to share my premiere [cough, cough] video-wielding skills by posting our interview of Hazo [sometime soon, right MG?]







I just had to love a conference that fed one of my other dreams (to become a real-live cello player), by including string instruments in the hip-hoppin', jazz tappin', rock and rollin' praise bands. I could not help but catch the enthusiasm of the cello player as she swooped her bow up to the ballroom ceiling (after she played the most astonishing solo and I was reminded that I'm not a real-live cello player yet.)

Overall, there really is too much to tell. I met so many awesome people, including the guy at the top of this post, sitting there with his bible (yup, it was about 6 inches thick... I thought he'd stolen an illuminated manuscript from an old monastery or something : ) . An English major, dating an Art Therapy major, Chris exemplified the deep-heartedness and warmth of the students at Jubilee. I met people who are making a difference in big and little ways. Stay tuned for more on that too, when I invite you to a special kind of House Party over at High Calling Blogs next week.





I cannot choose what impacted me most. The art, the stories, the music and poetry— all of it spoke to hidden places in my heart. Maybe this is best expressed by the series below, by artist Dayton Castleman. He shared how he came to create the Red Pipe in Prison art installment after spending time in the prison, letting the oppressiveness of the setting eat into him. "I began to see the spaces, the holes, the escape routes," he said. And thus was born the network of red pipes— dreams of freedom leaking out of prison windows, walls, corridors.

We all have dreams. Maybe that's what I remembered most while at Jubilee. For some of us, it's time to begin making them come true. For others, it's time to help a dreamer who has been ushered away by society... time to bring in a pipe and help him paint it red, place it near the escape routes, ride it out to the sky.











Jubilee photos by L.L. Barkat. Other awesome people I met or reconnected with: Alissa Wilkinson, Andy Crouch, Lauren Winner, Jonathan Walton, Byron Borger, Derek Melleby, Jeff Shinabarger, Sam Van Eman, Larry Bourgeois, Brian Moss, Michael Stevens, Jason Panella, Karen Sloan, and Scott Calgaro