I held a nest of dreams, waiting for Life to crack through. As the eggs incubated, I ruminated. Focused outwardly, it took time for me to sense a greater Presence brooding over me. I was becoming the dream.
At first, the nest’s inner bowl was dark, like the sky around me. It seemed impossible that what I envisioned would come about in my lifetime.
Gradually, stars glowed, offering an invitation. If I wanted hope to develop, I had to mature along with the dream.
Finding a nurturing gaze and fixating on the dream was one part. Letting go of any need to control how it would be realized, was the other.
Bringing the dream out from the inner recesses and into the world depended, in part, on other people. My elaborate word pictures had not been enough. People needed to see the vision modeled.
Do we know what we want? We may name many things, but can we represent those things until we become those things?
When we have exhausted our initiatives and drawn every ounce of energy from our cynicism, we return to innocence. This time, our belief does not begin with a naïve once upon a time, nor end with happily ever after, but rather a weightier faith that we’ve lived into, something akin to: more than we could ever hope or imagine.
What do we really want? Are we living into our dreams?
When we cannot define our dreams, how can we live into them? How will we know to greet them when they appear?
How can we fix a gaze on a dream we cannot voice? And how can we become what we want to see in the world, if we do not know anything other than what we want to rid ourselves from? Will we give up when we realize that to see hope ripen, we must actually grow up?
As we name specific dreams, deep wordless prayer moves us to the broader themes of faith, hope, love, peace, freedom, joy and etc. Becoming the dream means defining each attribute, one small expression at a time.
Sacred Ruminations*
What do you want?