“After I wrote this…there came to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more…until I would be capable of writing…in a nobler way. To achieve this I am striving…and this she truly knows. Accordingly, if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live that my life continue for a few more years, I hope to write…And then may it please the One who is the Lord of graciousness that my soul ascend to behold the glory of its lady, that is…who in glory contemplates the countenance of the ‘One qui est per omni secula benedictus.’”—Dante Alighieri, Canto XLII, Vita Nuova
It happened on an April eve, in a field where green of spring flush transfigured it to brown of fresh-turned earth beneath cutting blades of disks; where scent of humus held in air above the living ground opened and made clean for coming crop. The soft tilth of the earth collapsed in the weight of each human steps leaving imprint with every movement; and in the wake of tractor and planter, clean lines shone in parallel pattern of shadowed furrows in the falling light of sun.
It was here—within descending, changing, light of sun—the vision shone. The motor changed—the high whine of its operation keeping, as the rest of reverberations and clatter toned away.
He made an end row turn, the nose of the tractor moving left and north from an eastward heading, turning through until retracing back in parallel to path just traveled.
In the time of a single pass, all the sky was changed.
He stared, eye-to-eye, with the Light of the World—white orb through burning veil of cloud glowing in gold and orange-ember light that breathed more than shone from source. In the falling away of sounds, he felt it—a something—and without words, his soul communed with breathing Light; a shift in cloud exuding greater breath of light in affirmation, muted fire and tempering of flame Light’s answer in negation.
Soul asked. Sky answered.
At row’s end, he turned—again—away from the Light, and long-stretch of tractor shadow cast before his way.
Another end, another turn, and he spoke again with Light.
His spirit stayed in trance between headings of shadow and illumination; trance holding until the Light of the World departed from vision, when the fire of the sky fell beneath horizon’s demarcation, and the light of its flames cooled into violet steel with high-star glimmer above low-band shadow of clouds no longer a throne to Light.
Soul asked. Sky answered.
Trust…Give…Write the Dream…and so he would.