Staying faithful to the dream
02-01-2023
A month into the new year, our resolutions, goals, and dreams might already have become deferred. Keeping them a priority will call for passion, says Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes. The speaker at this year’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Virtual Praise and Worship Celebration, Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes reminds us that passion can help us live with the tension of working toward our dream while working through its challenges.
“Think about a person you admire…someone you feel is living her dream,” begins Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes. “It would do us well to remember that person’s life had setbacks.”
But setbacks are not to be translated as failures, notes Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes, who spoke at McCormick’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Virtual Praise and Worship Celebration in January. The annual remembrance of the life and work of the Civil Rights leader was coordinated by the Center for African American Ministries and Black Church Studies.
“Some amount of failure is par for the course,” says Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes, one of the founding lead pastors at The Double Love Experience Church in Brooklyn, New York, “if your dream is accessible in totality, it might not be big enough, because whenever you’re doing something of significance…of value…there’s the possibility of running into a challenge.”
Times of challenge also are times to learn more, reassess plans, consider new paths, build a team, or get additional resources, encourages Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes. “We all start out very enthusiastic about our dreams,” she says, “then life comes along, and we can get bogged down with the responsibility that is attached to the blessing. Pursuing our dreams will make life more difficult because they are taking us to new levels of responsibility and accountability. We don’t have to quit, but we might need to pause…to rest…to refill our tanks…and consider new strategies for getting from point A to point B.”
Pausing also is a time for reflection, to keep things in perspective, she points out. “One of the things that can keep us moving forward is remembering the joy we had starting out,” says Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes, who in addition to being a pastor, works as a brand strategist. “Why did we want to open that restaurant, for example? Was it because we like to cook? We like engaging with people? We’ll need to remember that joy when we go for the loan or try to find the right location for our business.”
All dreams aren’t personal, continues Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes, some are communal. “Think of circumstances like the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” she says. “Nothing should ever cause us to give up on the end result. We may have to revisit the path forward…we might pass the torch to others…we might pivot our tactics. What we do might change, but our ‘why’, the reason we are doing it, remains the same. If it had taken three years rather than one to desegregate those buses, the dream had to be realized.”
The church, believes Rev. Dr. Cudjoe Wilkes, has always been a place for dreaming…imagining what can be. “In the church, there can be opportunities to talk about our dreams…hear, ‘that’s a phenomenal dream’…or find help discerning what the impact of our dream might be on our community and world,” she says. “As people of faith and hope, we dream not only on our behalf, but also pray that our dreams – whatever it is we want to accomplish – will help to bring God’s ‘kin-dom’ to earth as it is in heaven. Ours is not only an eschatological hope, but also one that brings about the kind of world that is equitable for all. It’s important that we remind ourselves of that dream and never stop dreaming it.”
Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes
Founding lead pastor at The Double Love Experience Church in Brooklyn, New York and author of Psalms for Black Lives and Reflections for the Work of Liberation