We Dream Worlds

Healing Conversations - Reflections Series

Greetings Friends, and a warm welcome to our new subscribers. This month’s reflection invites us beyond the confines of the dominant paradigm, toward a world of expansive possibility.

The great warrior-poet Audre Lorde cautioned that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” She said, “In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action.”

Dominant forces stay in power not by convincing people their way is the best way, but by convincing us it’s the only way. Artists and visionaries are dangerous to the system because they conjure fresh possibilities and offer them as a sacred and subversive medicine, calling us beyond the status quo. Art, music, and writing have the power to transform consciousness, and that can transform the world. Such creatives form a visionary vanguard, dreaming worlds into being and disrupting the dominant narrative.

Nature is a constant teacher. On a walk in my neighborhood around winter solstice, I was captivated by what the trees were showing me about the turning of cycles, and how it is precisely the energy of new life emerging that hastens the old to its demise. It's not that the old leaves fall and then eventually new ones grow in their place. No! It's the emergence of the new leaves that pushes the old ones from their branches. Even in winter, when branches are bare, the buds of the coming season are swelling with life.

In these times of upheaval, when the old social structures of oppression and inequity are decaying—but still fighting to hold on—it’s the new ways of being that we are birthing together that will force empire's inevitable demise. We must not wait until the old ways are gone to dream and build and inhabit the new ones. We can embody them now, as so many are doing. There’s great power in the burgeoning life that is steadily pushing forward. And we must honor, with gratitude and humility, that so many of the “new ways” are a return to the wisdom of the Original Peoples of this planet: how to be in community with one another, with Earth and cosmos, with ancestors and coming generations.

A key principle of transformative social change is to focus on the vision, rather than the problem. Our work is not just to struggle against something, but to usher in expansive possibilities for collective flourishing.

What would you do differently in the world you are longing for that you might start doing now? What would you think differently? One of the ways empire maintains itself is by stifling our ability to dream outside the confines of its prescription, yet it’s precisely this capacity that ignites change. A world without fossil fuels. A world without corporations. A world without prisons or police. A world without borders. A world without enemies, weapons, or domination. Each of these is possible. When the extent of our innovation is how to modify inherently evil and abusive systems, something has been taken from us—by intention. But we can get it back. By upending what have been considered the “givens” of society, an array of alternatives becomes available.

It can be hard to imagine a different world, especially when we are daily bombarded by the brutal impacts of the current paradigm. But dreaming can be courted and cultivated. Look for the evidence. Pay attention to beauty, kindness, and innovation for the collective good. Challenge yourself to stretch your vision beyond harm reduction. (Harm reduction is important, absolutely, but it’s not the end point.) What is the world you would truly love to inhabit? Our dreaming is not idle, it is profoundly practical. It allows us to see ourselves, one another, and the world in a new way, and thus to act in a new way.

**

This post is adapted from my forthcoming book, Soul Medicine for a Fractured World: Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness. (Orbis Books, Nov. 2025)

Photo by Daniele Franchi on Unsplash.