One night when Harry was five, he lapsed into the unhurried
sleep of the child and had a dream.
A battalion of gorgeously mutilated angels gathered
around Harry and sang in unison:
“He’s done it to you again!”
“Done what?” asked Harry.
But that was the end of the dream.
For the rest of his life, Harry had variations of this dream.
In one dream, Harry is an angel taunting the child, Harry.
Thus from the age of five, Harry began a hunt for God and to
his dismay, Harry found him everywhere.
(c) Rob Goldstein 1992
Image (c) Rob Goldstein 2014
Thanks for the beautiful writing and the music 🙂
You’re welcome. Thank you for reading the post.
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This reminds me of something I read in a Joseph Campbell book, about the “sacred mountain” being everywhere. There was also a line in Seven Pillars of Wisdom in which the author, T. E. Lawrence, wrote that the Bedouin couldn’t conceive of God dwelling within him: he was too sure that he was in God. This conceptualization of God as being an all-encompassing ‘something’ is quite different than the highly anthropomorphized, masculine God of mainstream Christianity.
There is another section to this. Harry Follows God Everywhere…
I need to start working on it.
Thank you, Josh. You provided me with a different context for understanding this piece.
My pleasure! I look forward to reading the next section.
Thanks, Josh!
No problem!
I enjoy these “blasts from the past” Rob. This one is extraordinary.
When I was young I had a recurring dream. The setting varied but whatever I was dreaming always transformed into me being chased by something. One day in the waking world I determined to get control of that dream — to make my dream self turn and see what was chasing me.
To my astonishment I managed to do that. What was chasing me? Me. But I stopped having the dream.
Hugs on the wing.
This post was initially just a photo. I keep coming back to these bits about ‘Harry’ — The process of reviewing and understanding decades of writing is a bit daunting. Almost all of my work is first draft. The pieces specifically wrote for public readings are the only pieces I completed in the moment.
Good one
Love the artwork and the story too, indeed God is either everywhere or nowhere, I fear the latter judging the state of things.
Human nature and our recent ability to conceptualize a system of laws designed to help us transcend our baser instincts is certainly facing a test. Do we establish a world order that liberates the human mind or are we vicious predators only fit for life in the jungle? If the answer is the latter, we may have hit one of the ‘great filters’ scientists use to explain the Fermi Paradox.
The reason we haven’t made contact with other advanced civilization is they destroy themselves.