Dreaming Greatly
What the Grand Artist sees
Outside the airplane window, the sky and earth below are melted into hazy blue pastels, a few pricks of light twinkling like fireflies upon the distant land. The last bit of day hovers still, peach and mother-of-pearl, fading, fading, like a mother stealing away once her child has fallen asleep. The faraway cities are now fairy kingdoms, the lakes turned to silver, the forests and fields a misty, ancient, wild unknown. We are flying between heaven and earth, the place where dreams are woven and spun, where starlight and sunlight tarry together like two old friends. This is the view of birds, of angels, of hearts on their way home. Twilight deepens to periwinkle, then dusky lavender-gray. The day sighs one last time and slips away, dreaming of dawn, of all the new places in this old, lovely, aching world that its light will caress. Its dreams are falling now like stars, to stir sleeping souls, to remind them what it means to yearn, so that when the morning comes, joy will too. Light like honey, love like bread. And breath and beating heart enough to receive...
“We are dreamers, dreaming greatly.” ~ Lilias Trotter
What does it mean, to dream?
One day, on an airplane flying through a cloud-swept sky, I finished a book that changed my life.
It was called Theo of Golden. A book about a quiet, secretive old man who could truly see. He would sit down next to you on a small bench beside a splashing fountain, sunlight shining on the water and on the whiteness of his hair. He would ask you a gentle, piercing question, listening and listening. And then he would smile, because he saw you — truly saw you — as splendidly good. Looking into your face, he would behold the beauty of who you were and who you were truly meant to be.
I won’t say more, because you must go and read it. (Perhaps this very instant, if you can manage that!) Only, this is what Theo wrote in a letter to someone he loved very, very much:
“…I long for heaven. It might still be many years away, but I think of it often as the low sun and long shadows lengthen over my days. Some laugh, of course, at the notion — many of my artistic peers, and yours, find my hope positively naive and fanciful — but beauty, throughout my life, had always seemed to hint at something more. I long, as one has said, not to just see it but to verily become part of it. Enough of this standing on the outside looking in. Soon, if the Grand Artist has spoken truthfully, soon enough, the door will open for me.”1
Theo dreamed with all his soul, with his eyes wide open. He loved others so lavishly, like my dear friend Lily did (see her painting above). They were people of great creativity and imagination, embodying one of my favorite sayings: Love alone creates.2
And it was love that awakened the dream in the hearts of those around them — the dream of who God made them to be — and wove it into reality.
“What is imagination? According to MacDonald, it is the power in us that gives form to thought. It images. And therefore it is the thing inside of us that reflects the creative power of the One who made us. God created us to be His hands, the pigments in His palette, the actors on His stage, His musical instruments in the great symphony of creation. And we’re invited into that ongoing work of creation with Him. And we all have this gift…an essential part of what it means to be a human being, made in the image of God….We live our lives with vision and perseverance and hope, because of this deep-down impulse to look beyond what is toward what could be.”3
This is what it means to dream, I think. What it means to be an artist, to have a sacramental imagination, to share in God’s creativity. It means loving the other person before you just as they are, so fiercely and tenderly that they find themselves in the clear, open air and sunlight of God’s love. And His love makes all things new.
“I want to help you grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.” ~George MacDonald
You are God’s dream. The Grand Artist dreams of you.
Oh, let us allow Him to shape us into a living and breathing masterpiece.
“What else is prayer but a bare white canvas we offer to God — a quiet heart, full of possibility, waiting for Him to show us the shapes and the colors of the life we’re meant to live?”4
In the purple twilight, let us raise our faces towards the painted sky, towards His Heart which thirsts for our longing. Let us behold His beauty in the faces before us, holding on, hoping on.
Let us be dreamers, dreaming greatly.
Theo of Golden, Allen Levi
St. Maximilian Kolbe
If Only We Could See, Jennifer Trafton
If Only We Could See, Jennifer Trafton
A dear friend gifted me with Theo is Golden. Thanks for your recommendation.