...the stuff of dreams...

The moon was almost full.  The sky was that deep, midnight blue--bluer than blue.  The stars were out.  I could pick out Orion’s belt, but that would be about the extent of my astronomy knowledge.  Lights from the neighbors’ houses twinkled across the fields and through the leafless trees.  There was a bonfire in our once sturdy, but now crumbling, firepit.  (i guess that will be a job for my hubby this summer...)  In the glow of the flames and the shine of the moonlight, it was still beautiful, even the crumbling blocks.  There was a Phillies game on the radio; the crackling of the microphone, the rise and fall of the noise in the stadium competed with the sounds of the peepers and the rustling of the woods at night.  The trees were still bare, the night air was chilly, but it was the stuff of an enchanted moonlit wonderland.  Was i still on the ground?  I touched the solidness of the arm of the chair where i was sitting.  How the stuff of dreams and the stuff of reality seem tangled together on a starlit night in spring.

**************************************************

I was asleep, but yet in my dream, so very...wide awake.

The stage was dark.  The orchestra was warming up.  I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there.  I was waiting, not quite sure what I was supposed to do.  The director came to me.

“Are you ready?” 

I looked down.  I was wearing something silvery, light, beautiful.  Not a costume.  A costume is fake, something for a performance.  This was more like a garment.  The old Biblical King James word “raiment,” maybe.  This lovely thing was not just for a performance; this was more real than anything i had ever worn before.  I had never had anything like it, but somehow i knew it was made just for me. 

Was I ready?  I supposed so.  But ready for what?

“You’re going to dance.”  Dance?  Oh, no.  I don’t dance.  I am the most awkward dancer you have ever seen.  Nobody wants to see me dance.  I have poor rhythm and two left feet.  I never learned, and  I am too painfully conscious of how awkward of a dancer I am to ever be good at it.

“Oh, no,” I told the director.  “I can’t dance.  You don’t want me to dance.  Trust me, nobody in your audience wants to see me dance.  I have no training, and I am the worst dancer you ever saw.”

“Oh, yes,” he countered.  “You are perfect.  I have been watching you for a long time.  You are exactly what I need.  Just listen to the music, and follow your partner.”

Partner?  I didn’t know I had a partner, but now i see a faint shadow.  He is there, although nearly hidden in the dimly lit backstage.  Suddenly i am frightened; i am not ready after all, but the director turns back to the orchestra.  The music swells, and I listen.  Not just with my ears, but with my whole being. 

The curtain is up.

I begin to dance.  Haltingly, hesitatingly at first.  The music is all around me, in me, down to my very bones.  I follow my partner, who is a few steps ahead of me.  I still can only see him dimly.  But I know he is there, and he is not hard to follow.  At times I take his hand, at times i am dancing in his shadow.  I see no stage lights, just a beautiful purply-blue, like a summer night sky.  Millions of stars--above me, below me, all around me.  The light twinkling and glittering off my silver garment.  I find my dancing feet.  I feel the director’s smile on me. 

And distantly, all around me, I hear something I never even once imagined.  Applause.  It begins softly at first, then, like the music, swells all around me.  The curtain does not go down.  I am dancing, on and on, into the velvet of the purply-blue midsummer’s night.  The music carries me on its wings.  It feels like flying.  It is wonderful.  I am still following my partner.  He is never far away; I can just brush his hand with the tips of my fingers.  I dance on into the night.  The applause swells.  The stars are still twinkling.

*************************************************

Who knows where dreams come from?  Who can say that the most beautiful dream is not from Him who made the world?  Do lovely dreams not come from the same place where one finds the soul of every beautiful story ever written?  Each beautiful story that, after the last page is turned, leaves one with a feeling that, truly, someday, all shall be well. 

“When she [Irene] opened her eyes, she saw nothing but a strange lovely blue over and beneath and all about her.  The lady and the beautiful room had vanished from her sight, and she seemed utterly alone.  But instead of being afraid, she felt more than happy--perfectly blissful.  And from somewhere came the voice of the lady, singing a strange sweet song, of which she could distinguish every word; but of the sense she had only a feeling--no understanding.  Nor could she remember a single line after it was gone.  It vanished, like the poetry in a dream, as fast as it came.  In after years, however, she would sometimes fancy that snatches of melody suddenly rising in her brain must be little phrases and fragments of the air of that song; and the very fancy would make her happier, and abler to do her duty.”

--George MacDonald, from The Princess and the Goblin

After the last page is turned, after the last earthly light has gone out--will we dance on, out into the purply-blue starlight?  Always following our partner?  On beyond the stage, always under the smile of the Director, always dancing to His music?  Will we find that it was not a beautiful dream, but only the beginning of a reality more real, and more beautiful than we can imagine? 

And the strange, sweet song of the dream still lingers; the wonder of the dance that was so much like flying, the unexpected swell of applause, the touch of the dancer that i followed, and above all, the warmth of the director‘s smile.  And the thought of it makes me happier, and stronger for the tasks before me.