When the sun sets on a conscious dream the moon rises to carry the traveller through.
The dream was to walk from Cape Wrath to Hastings in one unbroken thread of continuity. The outward dream was interrupted by a blasted stomach bug (from which it took me several days to recover) and a week of extremely high temperatures for Southern England (which would have made walking the shadeless, surface-waterless South Downs something between unpleasant and fool-hardy).
But the moon rose and carried the inner dream onwards.
Few worldly dreams work out as intended: some are intrinsically unrealistic; others, such as this one, founder on the rough edges of reality, which polish our lives smooth, as do the waves the pebbles on the ocean’s shore. The inner dream – that extraordinary connectedness, of which the unbroken chain of days and steps between Cape Wrath and Hastings was but a metaphor – lives on. I am more connected to my heart, closer to my wilderness; I have come nearer to my home.
Dreams must live on in spite of the rocks by which life wears them down. When you can dream with your whole heart without the necessity of those dreams being fulfilled in the flesh, I believe you will have discovered divine hope.
