MISSION
STATEMENT
In
the Beginning
(Inaugural
editorial, Summer 2001)
Words, words, and more
words. Creeks and rivers of words spilling from
countless books and magazines and the endless
Internet, flooding into that rising ocean of
words that threaten to drown us all. Now even
more words from DreamSeeker Magazine.
Why add to the deluge?
Because
always we lovers of words sense somewhere still
echoing in us those verses of Genesis which tell
us that, confronted with the void, God spoke the
words that set creation in motion. Then God told
us to continue creation by naming what God had
spoken into being.
So
we do. No matter how many words spew forth,
uselessly enough more often than not, still we
ache to find some part of the void until now
untouched by human words and from it help call
into being yet more new worlds.
This
is not to imply the words in DSM are
better than those elsewhere. Rather, the hope is
simply that even amid the risk of too many words,
always there is fresh dreaming to be done.
As
DSM editor, I’ll be guided by the
conviction that amid the many Anabaptist
magazines already publishing fine visions, there
is room for another dedicated to publishing
“voices from the soul,” meaning writers
aching to share passionate and personal dreams of
how the void has been or could be shaped into a
new creation.
Commenting
in The New York Times Book Review (Jan.
7, 2001, p. 35) on “The Big Chill” in
writing, Roxana Robinson contends that whereas a
century ago books throbbed with emotion, now
“passion is largely absent from our books:
an icy chill has crept across the writer’s
landscape.” She hopes that “in the new
century we’ll rediscover passion”; I
agree—and hope DSM can be part of
the quest.
DSM
writing level will range from homespun simplicity
through whatever depths a writer wants to explore
without limiting audience to specialists. As can
be seen in this first issue, style will include
straightforward exposition yet with a tendency
toward lyricism.
I’ll
aim as editor to give DSM readers a
reliable source of well-edited writing rooted in
core Anabaptist or faith-related passions.
I’ll offer writers considerable latitude to
decide for themselves what topics they must dream
their way through and in what style to be true to
their unique callings.
I’ll
also work to keep DSM from drifting only
toward the leftwing radicalism some see as the
inevitable result of seeking new dreams. Surely
there is as much fresh speaking to be done by
those whose bent is conservative and who dream
their way across the unexplored terrains of the
traditional.
Roxana
Robinson urges us to consider the possibility
that even in—maybe especially in—a new
millennium, “love still drives us; we still
need it as the moving force in what we
read.” Let the dreamseeking, heartfelt and
passionate and filled with love, begin.
—Michael A. King
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