Dream Small

James K.A. SmithCommencement Address | King College | Bristol, TN | 7 May 2011

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards,our vineyards that are in bloom.

(Song of Solomon 2:15)

Mr. President, Esteemed Faculty, Family and Friends of the graduates, and, mostimportantly, Graduating Class of 2011,¶m guessing the faculty and admission counselors of this fine institution lured youhere with some hefty promises and big talk²that a King College education wouldequip you to transform culture, turn the world upside down, and become leaders in your field, all while roller skating backwards, juggling flaming chainsaws, and battling povertyin rural Alabama! (Been there, done that.) On the way in here, you were encouraged to³dream big.´On your way out there I have a different exhortation for you:

Dream

small

.´

Now I want you to understand that exhortation. I¶m not suggesting you shouldn¶t dream big. And without question, your King College education has well equipped you to dowhatever God might be calling you to in his broken-but-blessed world²to be a veritableTornado of grace and accomplishment, cutting a swath through this world that will leave behind a wake of compassion and achievement.So I have every expectation that you will continue to dream big. Indeed, I think that all comes rather naturally for us. We inhabit a culture that resounds with messagesand covert rituals that all subtly encourage us to pursue the bigger, the better, the mega.Even the church has been emboldened of late with big plans for transforming culture,newly confident in our ability to redeem the world. You have been told your whole life

2that you can do whatever you put your mind to. So ³dreaming big´ has sort of becomesecond nature for us. We are so constantly expanding our horizons, enlarging our territories, and looking toward a bright, shiny future of accomplishment that it¶s hard for us to see all the little stuff right in front of us.So you don¶t need me to tell you to dream big. But I do hope you¶ll hear mewhen I encourage you to also dream small. Because that might be what really matters.And it might be where your education really pays off.here is a curious little passage buried in the Song of Solomon that is germane tothis point. (If you know your Bible, and you know the Song of Solomon, thenyou¶re now hoping I¶m going to talk about sex. I¶ll see what I can do.) The poetryinvokes a concern with the little things through a viticultural metaphor of fruit-bearing. Itgoes like this:³Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards thatare in bloom´ (Song of Solomon 2:15).It¶s the little foxes the ruin the vineyard. If you¶re always dreaming big²surveying your vineyard, plotting the next acquisition of the vineyard down the road, dreaming about allyour plans for the estate²in other words, if you tend to always look beyond the vineyardand don¶t enjoy actually caring for the vines, you¶ll miss the pesky little foxes that areruining what¶s right in front of you. You¶ll never be able to enjoy the wine of thevineyard if you ignore the little foxes. You won¶t enjoy the fruit of the vine if you don¶ttend to the nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty work of viticulture.

3And here¶s what you might not yet realize: that real joy is found right there in thedirt, in the ho-hum task of tending the plant, in cultivating the

terroir

that will nourish thevines that yield the fruit. While you¶re imagining all of the outcomes of the vineyard andall the benefits to be reaped, what might be hard for you to imagine is that some of your best days²when you feel like all is right with the universe and what you¶re doing

means

something and you know why you¶re here and your heart swells in gratitude and joy--well, those will be days when you¶re mucking about in the vineyard, tending to the littlefoxes.Alright, let¶s come back from the metaphor for a minute. Please don¶t hear this assome moralism about the necessity for hard work so that you can enjoy a big payoff.This isn¶t some literary version of the no-pain-no-gain gospel of accomplishment and³success.´ To the contrary, what I¶m suggesting is this: so many of the big dreams thatyou now envision as ³success´ are, when you get there, going to feel unbelievably emptyand vapid and anticlimactic. In fact, let me put it starkly: if you keep thinking happinessis in the land of big dreams, then you are on a trajectory toward disappointment. If youonly dream big, you¶re headed for disillusionment²not because you can¶t do it, but precisely because you

can

! We¶re sending you out of here with the ticket to success. Butit can be just that ³success´ that will feel hollow and deflated unless you learn to dreamsmall.Talk to all kinds of people who have achieved everything they set out to do in thislife, who made it to the top of their professional heap, and what you¶ll often hear is this:³It¶s not what I thought it would be.´ What it turns out to be, even at the height of accomplishment, is boring as hell. Just when you¶ve spent a life climbing to that fabled