Sanctuary for Dreamers: Reflections on the Dreamer Center, Antigua

Almost every morning we walked to The Dreamer Center, which is the hub for the God’s Child Project. It was with a careful eye that Patrick Atkinson, the founder of God’s Child Project, built the center. With each entrance into The Dreamer Center, the meaning of sanctuary took a firmer and deeper root in my heart.

The center is a sanctuary for the numerous children who attend school there. These are children with precarious lives outside of the walls of the center. Poverty. Homelessness. Violence. Alcoholism. If you look carefully, you can see the reverberations and echoes of war in the dark shadows of these children’s lives.

The center is a sanctuary for the numerous mothers who enter its gates. These are women struggling to take care of their children and themselves.

I also started to see how The Dreamer Center was a sanctuary for the people who work there. Our group had the privilege of hearing life stories from several of the individuals who work for The God’s Child Project. They told stories of children as affected by poverty, violence, war, and alcoholism as the children who presently inhabit the classrooms and playground of the center.

But the center is something extraordinary for the staff of The God’s Child Project, which is probably what makes it extraordinary for the children there now—and extraordinary for me as I observed what was going on around me. The work done at The Dreamer Center is not simply a job for these men. Sanctuary for dreamers is the only way I can describe the vibe that permeates the world inside of the gates of The Dreamer Center.

As you enter the gates and walk past Patrick’s dogs and down the incline into vibrant energy that is The Dreamer Center, you are engulfed by beautiful foliage. But that foliage would be hollow without the passion and commitment of those who work there. You can feel how deeply personal it is to all of the people there.

The sociological side of me has an imprint of my observations I made while at The Dreamer Center, but the introspective-reflective side intrudes to articulate the feelings and emotionality within what might otherwise be mundane observations. I cannot help but see more than the beautiful foliage and lovely children playing. The investment that the individuals at The Dreamer Center make each and every day infected me and everything I saw during my time in Guatemala.

The Dreamer Center became a sanctuary for me. This may sound silly and selfish, but I felt myself finding respite and a space for reflection every time I entered the center. I found my past returning time and again when I was there—as if my subconscious was telling me it was safe for those memories to come back to me in those moments. It seems somewhat ridiculous now. The Dreamer Center is not for me—a privileged white American woman. But the people within the center graciously opened their hearts and minds to my presence (our whole group’s presence). Their openness enabled a deeper reflection for me. The stakes rose for me because it was no longer simply about me serving others. Nor was it just about teaching my students. It was about how I was linked into this world—for better and for worse. It was about how similar lives can be under very different circumstances. It was no longer about them or me. It started to feel like it was about us.

The chapel. It marked a place where my memories found safety. As a non-religious person, I must say that this was not a chapel in the institutional sense of the word. It was more like the nexus of The Dreamer Center for me. The richest source of sanctuary. The waterfall and cavernous structure made it feel earthy and alive.

The first moment that marked this location for me was during one of the life story sessions. The story was completely unlike my past, yet so similar, that I could hardly breathe throughout. I felt like I was disembodied, observing the speakers, the group, and myself from the entryway. What woke me from this state was the realization that my fingernails were about to puncture my arm. Crazy, I know. But in my haze I started to recognize the immense gifts being in given in those moments. What I regret, though, is that these individuals told their stories and I could not express just how much it impacted and resonated with me. How much it meant. I still can’t quite articulate it. I thanked them, but that didn’t feel like enough. I’m not sure what enough would be.

The second moment was after a rough morning visiting a malnutrition center a few hours from Antigua. We returned to The Dreamer Center and told the students to journal for about 30 minutes. I needed to journal as well, so I went to the chapel to write and think. It was there that a flood of visions raced across my mind’s eye. It was a mix of the tragedy within the walls of that malnutrition center along with older memories of my own vulnerability as a young girl. I kept seeing the face of a little boy at the malnutrition center who desperately wanted attention and acted out because there was no way for him to get everything he needed in that sterile, understaffed environment. At the same time, I saw myself in the arms of my father as he cried to me in one of his drunken post-rages about what he had to do and see in the Vietnam War. Thoughts were jumping so fast—I’m still trying to make sense of them. Everything bleeds into everything else in my mind’s eye. My ability to compartmentalize just completely broke down. So often, I try to keep things separate and tell myself that it is vanity and conceit that leads to my continual need to relate events, but in that chapel at that moment, it felt okay to let things blur and intersect. It felt like it was finally okay to take the things I had been seeing over the previous days and allow them into my own world in an intimate way.

The third and final moment that marked the chapel was at the closing ceremony. It was during that time that I found presence—enough to observe the students and staff at The Dreamer Center. It was not the past that was dominating my thoughts, but what was happening at that moment—and future possibilities. I could feel the bonds between students and my bonds with those sitting in that circle with me that night. It was one of the rare moments in my life that I felt part of a shared moment. It was also the first time in a very long time that the visceral power of life stories took hold. I am so attached to words, language, and dreams that the practical world often becomes fuzzy, but it was in that circle that I felt my dream world and the practical world unifying. And even though it was for only a moment, it left me with the possibility of something more. It reminded me of the power that dreams hold if we are brave enough to share them and put them out there in the real world. Act on them. If only I can be as brave as those who inhabit The Dreamer Center. Maybe, then, I can create a sanctuary for dreamers in my community—a place where those around me can be free to dream, create, cry, laugh, live, love, and remember….