I am a dreamer.
Not the kind who waits for sleep
to carry him somewhere beautiful.
I learned long ago
that Jacob was not the only man
who could find a ladder
between earth and heaven.
Sometimes the ladder is breath.
Sometimes it is silence.
Sometimes it is walking through a crowded room
while a sanctuary remains open
somewhere behind the ribs.
So I learned to dream
with my eyes open.
To wash dishes
while building kingdoms.
To walk ordinary roads
while wandering through inner temples.
To hear the noise of this world
without allowing it
to become the voice within me.
I taught myself to become still
without becoming motionless.
That may be the strangest prayer
I have ever learned.
My hands can be working
while my spirit sits beside still waters.
My feet can remain on the pavement
while something inside me
climbs the mountain.
I can stand among a hundred voices
and quietly search
for the one that carries truth.
Because I love people.
Perhaps that is part of my trouble.
I want to know their stories.
I want to understand
what carved the lines around their eyes,
what resurrects their laughter,
what wilderness they crossed
before arriving at the table.
Every person carries a scripture
that was never bound in leather.
Some chapters are spoken.
Some are hidden.
Some are written so deeply
between the lines
that reading them
can feel almost like trespassing.
And sometimes...
I read too well.
I notice the pause
before the answer.
The smile that arrives
a second too late.
The name that changes the temperature
of the room.
The invisible third chair
sitting between two people
who swear there are only two.
I have learned
that serpents do not always crawl.
Sometimes they are misunderstandings.
Sometimes old wounds.
Sometimes jealousy.
Sometimes loyalties
that entered the room
long before I did.
And discernment has taught me
that not every serpent
is mine to wrestle.
Not every storm
requires my boat.
Not every closed door
is asking for my hand.
There was a time
I thought hesitation meant fear.
Now I wonder
if sometimes hesitation
is the angel standing in the road
that only the donkey can see.
So when something within me whispers,
Wait...
I wait.
Not forever.
Just long enough
to ask whether the resistance before me
is a wall...
or a warning.
Because I absorb rooms.
Stay among enough people
for long enough
and I begin carrying echoes
that did not originate in my own chest.
Joy.
Grief.
Desire.
Anger.
Longing.
Things people say.
Things people carefully do not say.
A crowd can become an ocean,
and I have learned that a man
can drown in water
that never touches his skin.
So sometimes I leave.
Not because I hate the gathering.
Because even Christ
withdrew from the multitude.
There are lessons
that can only be learned among people,
and others
that cannot be understood
until the people are gone.
I need both.
The marketplace
and the mountain.
Conversation
and wilderness.
Communion
and solitude.
I go among people
because isolation cannot teach me everything.
I return to myself
because neither can the crowd.
And somewhere between them
I keep dreaming.
Not fantasies.
Possibilities.
I close no eyes.
I leave no world.
I simply look at what exists
and allow myself to see
what might exist beside it.
A different life.
A different creation.
A different version of myself.
Perhaps this is what faith
has always secretly asked of us—
to perceive the thing
before the thing has taken form.
To carry an ark
beneath a cloudless sky.
To plant seeds
while winter still owns the field.
To hear music
inside an instrument
before anyone touches the strings.
To call something possible
while the world
still calls it invisible.
So yes,
I am a dreamer.
But my dreams do not require sleep.
They require presence.
They require imagination
disciplined by discernment.
They require knowing when to enter,
when to remain,
and when the still, small voice
is telling me
this road is not yours.
I am learning not to confuse
every connection with covenant,
every attraction with invitation,
every coincidence with command,
or every feeling with prophecy.
Even a man who reads deeply
must sometimes close the book
before he begins writing himself
into someone else's chapter.
That lesson has cost me something.
But wisdom usually does.
So I walk.
I watch.
I listen.
I imagine.
And when this world becomes too loud,
I return to that hidden sanctuary
I have learned to carry with me—
the place where breath becomes prayer,
thought becomes vision,
silence becomes teacher,
and possibility waits
over the face of the deep.
Maybe that is what I mean
when I call myself a dreamer.
I am a man trying to live
with one foot in what is,
one foot in what could be,
and enough humility between them
to know
that I am not the One
who commands the light.
I am only learning
how to recognize it
when it says,
Let there be.