I have a dream

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I was making breakfast in the kitchen when  my daughter Safiyya bounded in. “I’ve had a dream” she announced.

In her dream, everyone in the world lived in one big house. So many different people, with different lives - all under the same roof.

I smiled. While I loved the idea, it sounded rather exhausting. I immediately thought of endless laundry and cooking.

Right now, sharing space- physical or emotional - feels harder than ever. Families meet less often than they used to. Communities seem on edge. Even conversations can feel risky. It would be so much easier to retreat into my own corner, with people who think like me, vote like me, live like me.

Dreams of togetherness can start to feel naïve. Or overwhelming.

That’s why the phrase “I have a dream” still matters. When Martin Luther King spoke those words, he wasn’t offering a plan. He was offering a vision - at a moment when progress looked painfully slow, division felt deeply entrenched, and solutions felt out of reach.

Faith traditions have long worked this way too - not by pretending difference doesn’t exist, but by offering a deeper way of seeing it. In the Qur’an - the book Muslims turn to for guidance - humanity is addressed as a single family, traced back to a shared ancestry.  God says in the Qur’an:

“O humanity, We created you from a single male and female, and made you into nations and tribes so that you may come to know one another.”

I find that striking.

In that vision, difference isn’t a problem to be managed, or erased - it’s intentional.

Not a force that pulls us apart – but an opportunity we’re given to learn how to live together.

Safiyya’s dream stayed with me. And then, many years later, on her wedding day, something I found quietly extraordinary occurred. People who wouldn’t usually come into contact sat together. People with different histories, faiths, accents all gathered under one marquee roof. It was a little chaotic. And it was hugely joyful.

And maybe that’s how change can happen - not all at once, not perfectly - but one shared meal at a time. Even if it does mean a lot more cooking.

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