The Dream

    I had gone to bed.  For a time, I could not sleep, but tossed and turned restlessly.  Then, as I finally started to drop off to sleep, I had the strangest vision, or if you will, a dream.
    It seemed as if I was so large that this solar system of ours was as a toy to me, and I held in my hands our planet.  It was as a ball or a precious jewel.
    It seemed so perfect, this jewel I held, all blue and green, with shifting streaks of white.  But as I looked more closely, I could see flaws.  The scars of war were there, old wars and the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And the newer wars of Vietnam and Bosnia.
    Then with penetrating sight, I looked and saw flaws more hidden.  The flaws of hate and suspicion ran across the face of this jewel I held.
    Suddenly, I feared to let go of this ball, this jewel, for if I let it go from me on its appointed rounds, I feared that it would come back to me in fragments, exploded, or as a blackened and dead world.  But yet I let it go, and watched more carefully, for it had become suddenly very precious to me.
    Then I was myself.  And I thought and then wondered if God were not at times afraid to let go of this world of His.  For it seems that however hard He tries, we people turn from Him and choose, instead of the path of glory and light; other darker paths.
    Then my dream returned to me.  And I seemed to watch, afraid, as this precious world of ours wound its way through the starry night. 
1964