Noemia Marinho Boccato is a visual artist and one of eight Dream Pod Members in Goldenwood’s 2020-21 Dream Forum. This is the third post in our #InsidetheDreamPod series. Find out more about Noemia’s dream, The Gleaning Project, following her recent reflections below:
I went to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx the other week because I had an appointment for the COVID vaccine. My husband and I parked the car close to the hospital and from where we were parked we saw a man dressed very poorly, probably intoxicated, acting very weird. He was drinking something we could not identify, and kept stumbling over a pile of trash bags. Just behind him there was a front yard so full of trash that it had become a nest of rats, and they were there freely moving around in broad day light. That scene penetrated my heart like a knife. I couldn’t bear the thought of being a parent to someone in that condition, for example. I felt God himself was communicating the heaviness of his heart to my heart.
Moving this dream forward has primarily involved my personal transformation in God’s timing.
My dream is to empower people experiencing homelessness and low income individuals through the visual arts. Through my dream, The Gleaning Project, I want to touch the lives of people such as this man. I feel such urgency in bringing this dream into existence. Moving it forward though, in my experience, has been a long process that has primarily involved my personal transformation in God’s timing. I think about Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David and even Jesus, and I see a gap between the time God speaks to them and gives them their dream or mission, and the time when it becomes a reality. God has a season for everything and his timing has to wait for maturity, readiness.
When the voices of impossibility, unworthiness, and doubts were loud and damaging, our communal listening journey spoke words of hope, faith, and encouragement.
The waiting for God’s timing can be discouraging, an actual exercise of patience and respect of the Lord. During much of this time I have lived in the wilderness or in darkness, not knowing what will come next. The Dream Forum community has been my companion during this journey, for these past few months. When voices of impossibility, unworthiness, and doubts were loud and damaging, our communal listening journey spoke words of hope, faith, and encouragement. Praying with and for each other kept me on track. It made me clarify my dream and brought forth the realization that I am part of something bigger, a larger plan that God is orchestrating in his perfect timing.
About Noemia’s Dream: I served for a year as a volunteer at the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen, and there began the Gleaning Project – a weekly meeting with a group of clients where we made crafts out of discarded materials. I dream of expanding the project’s scope by selecting and training participants to produce large-scale works of art which would then be shown, sold, and the proceeds invested back into the project. This is my vision for filling the gap between the needs of that community for safe, dignified work and the limited options available to them in the traditional job market, from which they are often excluded. Contact me at: email@noemiamarinho.com