By Cathy Hird

A phrase that community development groups are using to describe long term visioning is "blue sky dreaming." This is more than just long-term goal setting. This vivid image helps to open the mind to bright possibilities. Free dreaming points to what we hope the world and our community will be.

Often, we get caught up in the daily grind and forget to look toward the horizon, forget to hope for change, forget to look toward a place where the problems we work with would no longer occur. Sometimes the situation seems so entrenched, the barriers built of steel, so we cannot imagine a time when they no longer hold us. All we can see doing is remediate the damage. And a careful analysis shows that remediation strategies help support the current power imbalance, act like rebar in concrete to prop up the current structure.

If we cannot dream about clear blue skies, we might accept that poverty, injustice, discrimination, abuse are inevitable, natural, and just the way the world is. In order to keep searching for a way to build toward health, wholeness, a clear path, we have to dream of a new society. Opening ourselves to a blue sky dream can push us to break down barriers, shift power structures, and work toward a new way of being together and in creation.

The trouble is that the blue sky dream and the present murky reality can seem to be two different worlds. It can be hard to see a path from the present to that desired future. The distance can discourage us.

Back in the day, when I worked in community development, we used a planning tool that helped to connect the dream with the reality in a way that enabled us to move toward the dream from the current troubled reality.

First step was to dream. Always we must dream. Then, we would identify the current actors and how they behaved that did not fit the dream. Before we could get discouraged, we would describe what they would look like in that dreamed-of world. The next step was crucial: what would it look like for each actor to move one step closer to that dream. This had to be a concrete, doable action.

Once the table was drawn out, we would look for which of the small steps we had the leverage to accomplish. That was what we would work on first.

We would keep the chart around so that we did not forget the long term dream or the other actors. When one change was accomplished, we could pick up the next. And often, when one thing shifted, the whole table could be redrawn. We found we were a little closer to the dream, with a new set of specific actions we could press for.

I did learn that with the focus on small doable steps, I always had to keep the long term goal, that blue sky dream, near the top of my mind so that I did not stay focussed on the one little step. At that time, I was part of the founding board for an inner city women's organization that struggled to define their service model. There was huge relief when we came to a compromise that enabled us to move forward. A while later, I found myself in a conversation where I argued in favour of the small step we were taking and against the dream. I had worked so hard for the small change that I had lost sight of where we wanted to end up.

For me, a mantra for community and organizational development work became "Be open to compromise and hold on to the dream." We can imagine a blue sky dream and walk one step at a time toward it.

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.