I Dream of Donald
"Love all people, and draw near to humanity."
Yesterday I emerged from what was a blissful afternoon meditation and was met by a text from my brother, “Trump got shot in the ear at a rally. Appears to be okay.”
It was shocking.
Of course, I immediately jumped online searching for more information and tracking the latest updates. This meant sifting through all sorts of misinformation, unsubstantiated claims, hateful and polarizing rhetoric, blaming, conspiracy theories, and more—all available right at our fingertips with some tapping and scrolling.
Yikes.
Indeed we are living in troubling times. But we are not the first humans to do so. In order to find our way forward, we will need to tap into the deeper, truer story of who we really are.
With this in mind, I wanted to share a section from my new book The Way Home: Discovering the Hero’s Journey to Wholeness at Midlife. It comes from the beginning of the Chapter 9: Be Still (near the end of the book, so it includes references from earlier in the book). I was going to share this next week after the Republican National Convention comes through Milwaukee (where I live), but this feels like a “word” for today.
QUOTE
“Love all people, and draw near to humanity.
If you have extra energy as you do that, then study literature.”—Confucious
REFLECTION
I Dream of Donald
Every year my three brothers and I choose a city and meet up there from the various places we live around the country for a weekend together. Away from our family responsibilities, we have time to catch up on life, laugh until we lose our voices, and enjoy good food and drink, board games, karaoke, and usually a sporting event. We get to be brothers again.
Being alone and hungry in that cold canyon was a stark contrast from these brothers’ weekends, but that didn’t mean these trips were far from my imagination. For most of the quest experience, my dreams were mellow. Even as I asked the dreammaker each night and prepared myself to receive something with my journal and pen next to my sleeping bag, my dreams remained faint and forgettable. Until one night—the first night of my solo—a deep dream finally came to me, and it brought me to an imaginary weekend reunion with my brothers.
We are in New York City together, standing and talking outside of a skyscraper. It’s Trump Tower. One of my brothers gets a phone call and we’re invited to go up to Trump’s private penthouse. I’m not at all interested—thank you very much—but we decide to go.
We ride the elevator up and enter Trump’s penthouse. More specifically, it is the same exact penthouse that belongs to the rich and cruel almanac-owning 1985 Biff Tannen from Back to the Future Part II. It has chandeliers, faux gold stuff everywhere, jaguar and/or leopard print furniture, and a jacuzzi that seems like it’s in the main room.
Trump is there. He is mingling with other guests. I lose track of my brothers, but I sit down on the other side of the room, keeping my distance. I want nothing to do with him—this vile man who has locked children in cages, sexually assaulted dozens of women, called white supremacists “very fine people,” withdrawn from global climate agreements, removed protections for endangered species, mocked a disabled reporter, called places “shithole countries,” scammed hardworking contractors, formed a corrupt administration, bullied and gaslit a nation, and told a million lies (and who would go on to attempt a coup and commit countless other atrocities). In my mind, Trump is evil incarnate. I’m in the devil’s lair. Sitting on a couch. Saying nothing. Watching from a distance.
But suddenly a large door opens. A little girl, four or five years old, enters the room. It’s his granddaughter and she is beaming. I see them lock eyes. And I see his face become transfigured. From smug and insecure to tender and caring. She sprints to Trump. He crouches down, scoops her into his arms, and gives her a massive hug that she eagerly absorbs. The pair are squealing and giggling with delight.
I see kindness and gentleness.
I see light and love.
I see a radiant human being, who is worthy of love and has so much love to give.
Something inside of me breaks open as I witness this scene.
It’s my heart.
My heart breaks open because it’s as if I’m seeing the world through a new lens—the lens of pure love—for the first time.
Overwhelming love is flowing through me as I sit on the couch across the room, and I know I need to do something. I need to channel this love in some way. That’s when I realize that I have a specific gift to give Trump—I have a song to sing for him.
I rise from my seat and approach him. And then I hug him. He’s surprised, particularly because he had noticed I was keeping my distance from him.
“I have a gift for you,” I say.
“Really? For me?” he asks excitedly with an innocent, bashful look on his face.
“I’m going to sing you your favorite song.”
A smile spreads across his face as he chuckles with delight.
I drape one arm over his shoulder, begin to playfully dance, and sing:
“Start spreading the news!”
I proceed to belt out a rousing rendition of Frank Sinatra’s version of the classic song “New York, New York.”
Trump joins in. My brothers do too. We’re singing, laughing, dancing, loving.
But then I wake up. I’m jolted out of this fantastical scene. I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I’m alone, cold, and hungry.
And, I realize before I drift back to sleep, I’m kind of pissedoff.
Because I’ve been off the grid for over a week—off Twitter and beyond the reach of Trump and his toxicity—but I still can’t get away from this fucking asshole!
Lesson of Love
In the years preceding this dream, I encountered the jaguar and the owl, the saguaro and the sacred stones in a clearing. Poetry and spots of time and soul friends accompanied me along the way. And the day after serenading Trump, I would sing in the canyon and walk through the years of my life, before returning home to the kind welcome of family, and new possibilities. This Donald dream was an echo of all that came before and all that would follow.
It was disturbing, but it was enlightening.
It worked on me in strange ways.
As the days went on, I realized it wasn’t just a dream.
It was a vision.
Because it sealed a message into my soul.
The message of the dream?
The message of getting your heart back?
The message?
It is something so elemental, printed on the most basic greeting card and sung in the cheesiest pop song.
And yet something so magnificent and inexpressible, pointed to by the mystics in poetry, story, and song across the ages.
It is the Leaving, the Falling, the Rising.
It is the path, the journey, the destination.
It is the true treasure of the quest—the source of the sound of the genuine and the one and only human vocation. The message is love.
Love. Love. Love.
Life is all about love.
Immeasurable, unconditional love.
Love is our essence. It is where we come from. It is our destiny. Love is who I am and why I’m here.
Love is who you are and why you’re here.
Love is who we all are and why we’re all here.
It is one thing to learn this lesson in the company of kind creatures, generous landscapes, and compassionate community. But an even more terrible and wonderful revelation to receive in the faux gold penthouse of your enemy. An ancient Hebrew songwriter wrestled with this omnipresent, inescapable nature of love:
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
The vision showed me that love is an absurd, unstoppable force. There’s nothing beyond its reach, even the most horrible, hateful tyrant. In the presence of a symbol of pure evil, my eyes were opened and I could see a “child of God,” one whose core identity is beloved. And it called forth from me even more love in the form of a gift, a song.
This is what happens when you get your heart back: you can’t help but see through the lens of love.
As Brené Brown puts it in Braving the Wilderness, you gain the capacity to find the face of God in everyone you meet. That includes power-hoarding politicians, fear-mongering media figures, Twitter trolls, and anyone whose views are the antithesis of what you stand for. “When we desecrate their divinity, we desecrate our own,” she writes.
You start to answer and embody an emphatic yes to the question Victor Hugo asks in Les Miserables: “Is there not in every human soul, a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish?”
This story is true, you realize.
True of those who have forgotten, ignored, and rejected you. True of those who have carved your wounds.
True of those who have harmed and hated you and your people and other people.
True of those who you think are undeserving. Love has always been their fundamental identity. It’s just that they forgot their way.
They became estranged from their true selves. They lost their hearts.
Just like you and me.
* * * * * *
To continue reading, grab your copy of The Way Home.
