THE RAPTUROUS BLAZE OF MY OWN INVENTION

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

The Great Dream of my life has forever existed just beyond my reach. Somewhere out there… in the future… On the furthest shores of this milky way ( a few meager light years away) lies everything anyone has ever waited for.

I’ve been sailing towards my Great Dream vigilantly since I first learned I had the particular kind of sea legs that were willing to negotiate with gravity.

I’ve built my starship from the driftwood of all that’s ever been wrecked, from the lovesick remains of every galactic mariner that has sailed towards the “the light” only to be swallowed by the dark mere moments away from their Promised Land.

But hope still floats for all the ones we’ve lost at sea…

Fortunately or unfortunately, they’ve all piled into my boat - a boat that’s nearly capsizing from the ruckus of ancestral souls wrangling for one final shot at sea. My present time ticket (this little life I’ve got) their only ride.

And so We sail into that Heavenly Battles of the Ages, armed with one weapon: A silver chest plate across my heart, protecting the faintest flicker of light that still promises to get us there.

I’ve spent lifetimes chasing this particular stardust, the mercurial light of The Great Dream taunting me onwards - like a comet, its flickering magnificent yet so steadily departing. But this captain is a hopeless romantic, a stubborn believer. For better or for worse, I pledge my loyalty to every passing comet, knowing that as long as my eye remains upon the heavens my gaze will soon be rewarded by a comet a little bit more like me - one aspiring to defy its own physics. Perhaps its glimmering tail will circle upon its own light, cocooning into a force only understood to us as Miracle, that golden embrace holding everything weary within it -

still -

suspended -

and safe amongst the wildest of Dreams and finally at home in the rapturous blaze of its own invention.

As my heavenly body fights amongst the stars, my very human feet stand here alone in a little cottage, in a garden, on that special sphere of existence we call Earth. And so, I am up There and equally down Here, forever split in two - the clay version of me toiling amongst all the other clay.

On this particular clay day, the Gardner Carlos, has come to help me row the boat in. His brown eyes translucent, which usually means a truth is arriving. He looks through me. I know now to never look away from an oracle. He can see all the things I am accidentally revealing. He sees that I’m on a mission but he sees that I’m lost at sea. And as with any good oracle, he knows that Both can be true.

He asks his daily question: Where is the “future?” Where is this “future” place you speak of?His question birthing the semblance of some kind of answer within me. A single look from those glacial eyes completes it. What he means is that “the future” can no longer be beyond my reach. None of us cannot afford to sail outward any further. We’ve cast our nets too far and we are nearing the edge of infinity. It is time to surrender this impossible voyage and return to the one true harbor within:

The future is a single point of light within you, just below your armored chest plate, just below that guarded heart. It is a single switch that only you can flip and it has the power to transform all those unmet “futures” that ever were into the infinite now that will forever be.

He asks me if I’ve ever contemplated the moon, that night light that circles our clay with unwavering devotion. Every cell tingles with recognition. I know what he is saying. Carlos the Gardner has come on a Wednesday in June to put an end to the faulty quest within me. To remind me that the greatest, dreamiest things in this world just are.

I no longer need to navigate those ancient ships lost at sea, fighting wars that were waged without my permission. I am the earth and that very moon, circling so close overhead - its nightly promise the holy meeting of every unmet dream that’s ever been dreamt and my Presence the only gravitational pull I’ll need.

We alone hold the switch to Infinity. Our ghost ships may sail onwards, lost in time, but all that is asked of us now is that we ground our ancient sea legs in the soil of our own garden, allowing the sacred longing of life to encircle us with the same luminous loyalty of the moon.

Your dream is dreaming of you.

Stand still and weep with joy at the rapturous blaze of your own invention.