Stumbling Towards Purpose

“I am thinking about the days

We led ourselves astray

In more than many ways…

Where will be tomorrow?

What will we see today?” “Here” by America

It is deep in the middle of the night, and I am tossing and turning in my sleep. I am not stressed, and there is nothing bothering me. What I feel is an inner stirring deep within, a vague premonition that there is something more ahead of me than what I am experiencing.

This feeling is not new to me, yet it seems to always come at four in the morning, when the world is silent and dark and the only sounds I hear are those deep within me.

What I am feeling is the restlessness of unfulfilled desires-desires I have yet learned to articulate. What I hear are the rumblings of primordial aspirations I came into this world with—rumblings that can only be heard when the noise of the world and my own daily concerns fade away through deep and dark hours of pre-dawn.

What if I were to take these midnight stirrings as a signal to wake up, not just physically, but wake up to a deeper consciousness- to the place where dreams are born and desires come alive? What if I am being constantly called to a deeper reality that I only hear when I am cut off from the noise of the world— a calling out to trust in who I was always meant to be?

The history of mankind is full of stories of men and woman who heard the inner rumblings of their deeper selves, and who left the safe and expected path laid out for them by society or family for a dark or dimly lit path that promised little in return. They listened and were compelled to follow.

These became the visionaries that moved mankind forward. These are our poets and writers, our artists and inventors, our mystics and saints, our change-agents. The William Blakes, Dorothy Days, Wallace Stevens, Martin Luther Kings, as well as all who left the safety of the known for the call of the unknown—whether they received public recognition or not.

They acted with courage on very little else but that midnight whisper, that early morning glimmer, that sense of dissatisfaction, that desire for more.

What about the rest of us? I firmly believe each person born is given at that time the seed of who he or she is meant to be. We begin our lives believing almost anything possible. As soon as we are able to form word pictures or thoughts, we begin to build a vision of ourselves in the world.

My first thoughts as a three-yr. old was to be Zorro, and then as I grew, I wished to be a cowboy, then a star athlete, a rock star, and a famous writer.

As a nine-yr. old I listened to my mom and dad argue (lovingly-but heated) over who would be the better president; JFK or “Tricky Dicky”. I would day dream about being the best president- one who always knew the best course of action for any problem, who could bring peace to the world while eradicating poverty and discrimination.

I don’t believe we can do anything we set our minds to. I don’t tell my children they can be anything they want. It is plenty enough to become who we are meant to be.

What so often happens is that our childhood or adolescent dreams never get the chance to mature to what they are really leading us to. Instead, life circumstances begin its soul-stealing work of molding us into a particular form-a way to be that is acceptable to those around us.

It may never have been my purpose to be all those things I thought I would like to be—but the act of dreaming is what propels us into who we are meant to be. To stop the act of dreaming, to stop listening to the inner rumbling in the middle of the night, to ignore the still small voice speaking to us when the rest of the world slumbers, that is precisely the moment our dreams die.

In the words of the song “HERE” by America

“I am thinking about the days

We led ourselves astray

In more than many ways…

Where will be tomorrow?

What will we see today?”

Have I stopped looking for more? Where I will be, and what I will be doing tomorrow depends on what I see and what I hear within my soul today.

In the fourteenth century, St. John of the Cross, wrote some of the most spiritually evocative words ever written;

“In that happy night

In secret, seen of none

Seeing naught myself

Without other light or guide

Save that which in my heart was burning”

                                                    The Dark Night of the Soul Stanza III

And from ancient Hebrew Text;

I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking. Song of Solomon 5:2

I will bless the LORD who guides me; even at night my heart instructs me. Psalm 16:7

Yes, midnight restlessness may be much more than the pepperoni pizza you ate. It may very well be the God within stirring you to remember you have a unique purpose and place in this world. The question is, when the stirring comes, will you have the courage to follow, no matter how little light or direction you may be given.

I didn’t become a cowboy or popular musician, actor, or writer. For the most part, it is because I have not been willing to sacrifice enough of my comfort or have the courage to take the risk. But where I have listened, and had the courage to follow, I have been immensely rewarded.

Victor Hugo wrote along these lines, lines I have printed and in the front of my journal;

“Every man has within him his Patmos. He is free to go, or not to go, out upon that frightful promontory of thought from which one perceives the shadow. If he does not, he remains in the common life, with the common conscience, with the common virtue, with the common faith, or with a common doubt; and it is well. For inward peace it is evidently the best. If he goes out upon those heights, he is taken captive. The profound waves of the marvelous have appeared to him…He distinguishes in that twilight enough of the anterior life and enough of the ulterior life to seize these two ends of the dark thread, and with them to bind his soul to life. Who has drunk will drink, who has dreamed will dream. He will not give up that alluring abyss, that sounding of the fathomless, that indifference for the world and for this life, that entrance into the forbidden, that effort to handle the impalpable and to see the invisible; he returns to it, he leans and bends over it, he takes one step forward, then two; and thus it is that one penetrates into the impenetrable, and thus it is one finds the boundless release of infinite meditation.”

Patmos is the Island that St. John the Evangelist was banished to and where in his solitude he received and embraced a spectacular vision of Christ the King and the end of time. Patmos in this passage is the symbol of letting go of all else for the sake of a single vision or purpose -the pearl of great price.

As he says, most of us will not look out and peer into the abyss of our own soul and our being. We will be content to live a simple life –hopefully a life of love and service, and that is enough.

But there is available to us all even more, if we have the courage to look and to follow.

Kind Regards,

Bob