If dreams there be …

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:43-45a)

Songs and dreams tell us who we are, who we are meant to be, the soul who longs to live through the one precious life we are given. They alone unlock the hearts secret room, releasing desires over which reason has neither control nor arms to reach.

So it is, that on a single day, two moments come that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, except for the voice of soul speaking through both.

The song came first, a movie theme, Il Postino, decades old, but what does age matter? Beauty, love and wonder know no age. It began with the soft trill of a single flute, then a violin, a love theme, its melody gentle and flowing, filled with an insatiable ache to touch and know and be absorbed, lost in love’s embrace.

The heart is much quicker than the mind, and in an instant my heart prays silently then with words to be one, lost in the song, not to hear it with the ear but to be inside the ache of its melody, wounded and wanting, flowing in the stream of love and longing.

And for a moment, prayer has its answer; thought is dispersed, the mind falls silent as death and the heart is carried away in the wonder of beauty. I am in the song and the song is in me, and we are one. Lost in love’s melody, once more I know I am Love’s blessed image, beloved from all eternity, enclosed in the heart of the One who sings love songs in my soul.

Feeling this, there is neither need nor want for anything more than Love’s constant return that, however unlikely, I might become the Love who dwells in the inner mansion of this heart, instead of the imposter who so often wears my face.

Is this but a romantic dream? Well, there was a dream this same day. It left a lingering image, a memory, as sleep slipped away. A golden-haired girl, age 3, in a soft-green and white checkered dress. She wandered up the aisle of a crowded chapel, packed for a graduation ceremony. 

Slowly looking around, she passed the president of the seminary who was speaking at the lectern. Climbing a couple of steps, she walked among and around the knees of faculty in academic robes and full regalia seated there—looking for me. But she cannot find me because I am sitting far to the side, several rows deep among the graduates, barely able to see what was happening.

This wasn’t just a dream. It happened. And the moment lives in my heart, which is why, I suppose, it appeared in my dream. But in my dream, something happens that didn’t happen. I rise, scoop her up, enfold her in my arms, enclosing her in my heart so that the moment might live forever, shining with love’s beauty, revealing once and for all what human beings are made of and made for.

Savoring that image, I know that the love in which I hold her … is the Love who holds and encloses me in the divine heart, living still in this precious life with which I have been graced.

If dreams there be, and if dreams come true, may this one forever haunt my days and nights … until the Love who inspires them expands my heart to love all that God loves. Perhaps then, I shall truly sing the song that God never ceases to sing, lost in love’s melody.

David L. Miller