Given as First Word on 4/11/16 at West Hills Friends
Hi, everybody. My name is Fiona, as most of you know. I think I might be the youngest person in this building to do First Word. I’m pretty nervous. This is my first time. And I hope you like it.
So a few weeks ago, I had a dream. I dream that seemed like it wanted me to do First Word. So here it is.
So my mind pictured that I was in a cluttered room. It was a very cluttered room. It was full of ladders, tables, and chairs and all that whatnot. . . It was completely full of all sorts of things that people don’t want. . . . It looked like a garage sale, full of stuff people didn’t want, piled in a room that was spray-painted white. And in that room, there were workers with hard hats on. They probably had hard hats on because they were scared that part of that clutter would fall on their heads! They were wearing orange uniforms. I don’t know why they were orange. . . dreams are funny that way.
It was completely cluttered except for a little space in one of the corners. It had no clutter in it. It wasn’t even spray-painted white. It was just a hole. It didn’t have any clutter in it.
The workers seemed to ignore it, trying to avoid all the clutter and putting, for some reason, more clutter in it, as well as trying to make space for more clutter that would just come. But one worker was trying to shove a piano somewhere close to the uncluttered space. And another worker shoved a traffic cone through the uncluttered space – in the uncluttered space – but the uncluttered space stayed uncluttered. It’s like the cone almost disappeared.
So one worker was busy moving something to the uncluttered space and he noticed that the traffic cone wasn’t in the uncluttered space. And so they put their hand through the uncluttered space to see what would happen, they pulled it out and their hand glowed gold. And so they put their whole body in and then they turned into Jesus for some reason. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it. I thought it was kind of weird.
The other workers seemed to ignore the worker that had turned into Jesus, and the worker – the worker found a door in the room behind all that clutter. He just left.
And then I woke up, and something called me to do first word.
So today, I want you to think about, when are we the workers? When are we the people that ignore other people? And how can we be more like the worker who turned into Jesus? How can we notice that uncluttered space? And where can you find your uncluttered space?
—Fiona (age 9)