Sleepy little face with the glow of dreams still clinging, strong round limbs so quick to explore, wide eyes that see and love: I love you.

Downy head, golden copper hair floating in the breeze: I love you.

Questing finger, never taking no as an answer: I love you.

Restless night-time body, flopping here and rolling there, disturbing my sleep and my dreams: I love you.

Little lover of music--arms waving, compact body bouncing, sweet voice uplifted in joyful participation: I love you.

Small daughter, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: I love you.

Belonging

We all feel the almost unbearable urge to fit in somehow, to pull together the fringes of the world into place around us in the shape of family, friends, job, entertainment, clothing. We also have a sense that this is a symptom of the herd mentality and to be scorned, a shame which causes us to apply and reject the labels so frequently used: hipster, ghetto, nerd. But it is a universal necessity to belong. We seek esteem of whatever qualities in us we deem estimable--a hair cut, our ability with computers, holiness like a patched and shredded garment. Who we are often cannot stand alone. And I'm not sure it should. Fellowship is the basic emotional/spiritual need, the cry that goes deeper than Maslow's hierarchy.

See how we shift the upholstery of our souls? How this one assumes the skinny jean/shipster look and that one the pencil skirt/intelligentsia look--changing the upholstery, and sometimes the attitudes, that cover the still-beating heart and blood.

So in this sense we are shallow creatures, changeable, malleable. Ready to give up one skin for another, assuming actions, mannerisms, thought patterns like chameleons. But in another way we are sublime for this trait, for we recognize the trappings which seem to us admirable and pursue them, and our souls achieve a momentary apotheosis. It will not last, but the transformation has made us divine for a moment. It has also brought us one step closer to other souls--we have reached out of the forsaken splendor of our own souls and into the territory of another spirit.

Fellowship. The urge to belong. Part of the human condition, the splendor and the squalor.

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Abstraction

What does it mean to dream?

What is a dream? Lying within and sparking to life at a single thought--this is a dream. Latent, slumbering, essential, the vision that, though unformed, seems to bring with it the path of life--this is a dream. From youth an inner hunger that cannot die, though denied and starved through a lifetime of duty--this is a dream.

It can be ambiguous or specific. It can be many-faceted or single-faced, obsessive. It can surface differently at different times of life--a painful yearning for somewhere else now and a desperate need to travel to Ireland later--but it is always within the diamond casket of your soul, burning and burning to escape and breathe, to grow and lick away at the false structure of life with its ravenous beautiful flames.

It is fire in the blood. It is night with a single star. It is the innocent breeze on your cheek. It is all this, and it is nothing. It is inescapable and easy to ignore.

What does it mean to dream?

Without a dream you are nothing. With a dream sometimes you are nothing, too, because a dream carries with it the dull knowledge that no matter how hard you strive you can never fully live it out, you will never find the perfect representation of that vision that seeks expression within your heart.

But with a dream you are everything, because you are living on all cylinders. You are striving toward something beyond, and you are choosing every moment to seek until you find. Whether your dream is travel, or education, or business, or photography, or wine, or cathedrals, or color, once you step into the cascade you join the River of Life and become truly alive for those moments. You swim in the sea of mystery. You breathe deep the air of freedom.

What does it mean to dream?

It means you never stop facing yourself with brutal honesty. You admit laziness, pain, bitterness, incompetency, and you go on. You make yourself room to fail, and you succeed. You strike out into the unknown without the assurance of salvation. You fail at explaining yourself to others but you still keep trying.

This is what it means to dream, a little.

What does it mean to you?