The Power of Dreams and Why We Need Them
I once had a dream so powerful my wildly hopeful heart longed to tell it as a story that had actually happened. A story that perhaps our great, great grandchildren might one day tell about a memory from their time long ago.
The dream was compelling enough to prompt me to create a living theater event, where there were props and scripts and the audience became the actors. It was an incredible night.
In what way are your dreams seeding and feeding the emergence of a new Earth?
Come along with me on an imaginary journey to a future time. We will pretend this dream already happened. Decades ago.
In this dreamscape, your great, great grandson, now himself an old man, sits on a worn-out wooden chair alongside a majestic oak on a balmy spring afternoon. His grandson sits on a hand-made swing, feet pumping enthusiastically up into the sky and then down toward Earth, swinging for all he’s worth from one of her sturdy limbs. And so the story begins:
The old man looks tenderly upon the young lad, who has stopped his swinging to listen more intently. The oak’s early spring leaves seem to whisper, “hush, hush”. The boy’s question lingers in the air and then, as if caught by a gentle waft, settles onto the old man like the wool blanket that is his constant companion.
“Tell me again, Grandpa. What put an end to war?”
Gnarled hands play for a moment with the blanket’s frayed edges; an ancient, lined face relaxes into a smile. Rocking slightly to and fro, the old man casts milky eyes up into the oak’s broad, sentinel branches and begins:
“Some say it was a wee lass, just about your age who possessed a certain magic. Others say it was the prayers of the land and all the earth-beings that did it. Still others say it was neither of these, but a sudden and simultaneous Re-Membering that descended upon all human beings. I do not know for sure, lad, for I was a mere babe, and hidden away in the hills with the other children.
“A great battle waged upon the land. It was a battle of brothers and sisters; it was a battle of peoples, no more or less murderous or devastating than any other of the many wars that had been fought throughout the ages.
“In the years following, my own Grandpa, who raised me, told me The Peace Story over and over so that it became imprinted upon my heart. He was there, and this is what he saw:
‘Suddenly our fighting ceased. We were brought together, and some Ineffable Power compelled us to line up, each side facing the other at a close distance – only a few yards away. Two lines of us snaked across a vast, scarred landscape as far as the eye could see. We were guided by the Ineffable Power to close our eyes upon things mortal and be silent. We were guided to listen with our hearts.
‘After a few eternal moments, I opened my eyes, as did others. I looked out at the opposing sea of faces and witnessed something other-worldly: The faces had changed! Those of the enemy whom I had known personally before the war—brothers or neighbors—I saw their faces. Many of the enemy whom I had not known, I saw my own face. Think of it, lad! Each of us was looking at a wending river of our own face – there, and there, and there, and there—interspersed with one or two faces of the people whom we had known and (once) loved.
‘We stood, stunned and wooden, only our heads moving, seeing face after face, mouths agape. Suddenly, like a great ocean swell, we fell into each other’s arms weeping. Just then, the faces changed back, but we were no longer, “sides.” Linking arms, we walked together across the battlefield, bearing brutal witness to the carnage and destruction we had wrought.
‘In the ensuing days, as One Body, we worked to restore the land, to bury all dead, and to make amends to Mother Earth and her beings.
And this, they say, is what put an end to war.’”
The boy is quiet. Instinctively, he knows to revere the moment each and every time he hears the story. The old man’s crinkled eyes are closed as he continues to rock back and forth, cocooned in a memory of long ago.
“And because we tell The Peace Story over and over, the glow of that Ineffable Power has remained within the hearts of all peoples, everywhere,” he finishes softly. “And all is in harmony. All is well.”
I hope wildly and fervently that each of us will stop the war in our hearts; that each of us will find the source of Ineffable Power I dreamt about. I hope for peace.
During this equal time of light and dark, may you feel the blessing of this old Gaelic song.
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of the Ineffable Power to you.
Deep peace to you.
(c) 2015, 2024, Jennifer Comeau