I’m grateful for this dream. Jean and I are in the habit of lying in bed in the mornings, having coffee, talking, watching our “today show” (the sky, birds, the SF Bay, the Marin hills, and whatever else we can see from bed), and having a short meditation on what we’re grateful for.
One thing about this dream is that the two themes were so vivid and intertwined – one theme being our surroundings as we walked along and the other theme being what I was saying and thinking. My recall of the details of the dream is far greater than most dreams I can remember.
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The dream: Jean and I were walking in a warehouse district on the edge of downtown Dallas. I was telling her about the grants research and writing process I used beginning in the early 1980s. We were holding hands and walking through vacant lots and deserted buildings and…
I was telling her about the foundation directories I found at the Dallas Public Library, going through these big books page by page writing down information on foundations whose areas of interest matched my own (especially healthcare, refugee, and justice issues). I also kept information on foundations with board members I had some connection with, no matter how small. I was thinking in detail about the area of the library where the foundation books were kept.
We were walking on paths winding through dry, sun-blasted vacant lots and sometimes on concrete floors with broken glass in big empty buildings like old steel mills. There were a few people around 
– they seemed like about who you’d expect in that sort of environment, many broken, some might be dangerous, and I was greeting people the usual way: “Hey now” and I was talking about …
the proposal-writing area in my office – a ~3×8 plastic table divided up into labeled squares for the documents that had to accompany proposals, like 501 (c)(3) docs, annotated board member lists, budget documents, etc., etc. and telling Jean about sending proposals every few weeks, each one rewritten and better than the previous one. At the same time I was teaching and volunteering and delivering services – building a reputation and I had a reputation.
The environment we were walking in was deteriorating, becoming a little more ominous, a real desolation row. I was glad I’ve been in these sorts of places before. A mentally ill kid, a teenager walked alongside of us for awhile. We walked past a woman with eight Doberman pinschers. I was relieved to see some condos ahead, but when we got to them we realized they were public housing projects and run-down like everything else. A young woman met us as we were walking up to the buildings. She was a little weather-beaten, tanned. She was wearing a green skirt with a fringe on it; she was looking something like some of the people at the Rainbow Gathering, pretty run-down herself. She offered to take us in to one of the apartments to “see Don” – I said “No, but thank you” and she was like a classic case of a shrug and whatever.
I was telling Jean about writing proposals for Vietnam veterans services, refugee health, and drug treatment and prevention. I knew I wouldn’t get funding from my first proposals, but I didn’t care; I was learning how to do it. I started with the most obscure and least likely foundations and worked my way up the ladder to bigger and better-endowed ones.
Everything was pretty desolate and we couldn’t see downtown anymore. I jumped across a ditch and Jean took three steps to her left and got across on a level place. We were both getting tired (but there was no place to stop). I asked Jean if she needed to pee and she said no and then I awoke and got up to pee. That was the end of the dream. I wrote all this down at 0530.
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In most years when I was writing I averaged bringing in around $100,000. I also initiated other means of development as it’s essential for nonprofits to have multiple streams of income. I never saw any of the money personally, but I accomplished most of what I set out to do: a lot of people got help – from broke-down veterans to “jaded, faded junkies” to children impacted by drugs to refugees and immigrants from across the world to children who were abused to people at the end of life. I had a dream of the world as a better place, less suffering, more justice, all that.
Money for changing the world http://ckjournal.com/money-for-changing-the-world