Can you hear the people sing?

From Food Stamps to subsidized housing, to low-wage jobs, to homeless shelters, our voices are not heard. "Experts" tell us what is wrong with us, what we need, what we have to do, how we'll be punished if we don't measure up, and our very personhood gets lost in the mix. As the people at the barricades sin in Les Miserables, CAN YOU HEAR The People Sing? Can you hear us NOW?

As Jim Wallis says in Faith Works, "Listen to those closest to the problem." "It's really an old approach, but one that has escaped us in our age of professionalism and bureaucracy, even in the churches."

Homeless dream

I had this really intense dream about 20 years ago or so about homeless people.

I'll never forget it.

In the dream I was walking at night in a really nasty, dirty, rundown part of a city -- old abandoned warehouses with broken windows, trash everywhere, all dark and gloomy, no lights. The dark, abandoned back end of the downtown of an old city.

I ended up in a sort of open area between the warehouses, and I could see lots of people looking out from dark alleys and behind dumpsters and old doorways and such, all dressed kind of raggedy with deep, sad eyes. They all started walking out into the open area where I was standing, basically encircling me.

An old, old woman with wild dishevelled hair, covered in layers of worn-out tattered clothes came forward and got right in my face. "What are you going to do about this?" she demanded.

I was taken aback, of course -- I didn't know how I had ended up in this place to begin with, much less what I was supposed to do. I started looking around every which way trying to figure something out. I noticed some stuff sticking out from behind one of the dumpsters.

I starting pulling out all kinds of different animal skins and wonderful carved animal masks which I passed around to all the people who had shown up in the circle. And then I found that I had a drum in my hands -- sort of an Inupiat type of round, flat hand drum.

All the people got dressed in these animal skins and animal masks, and they had their own drums and rattles and we all started drumming. A big fire appeared in the center of the circle, and all the people in their animal regalia started dancing around and chanting and howling and singing -- it was totally wild and unrestrained.

The moon came out high in the night sky and everything was transformed -- all the dirt and grit and darkness and nastiness melted away under the light. The circle dance went on for a timeless time, and then the old woman came up to me again and silently nodded, "yes."

And that was it, I woke up. I've always wanted to honor that dream, but I've never really figured out how to do so.