Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

He stood looking outwards towards the horizon.  He turned a slow pirouette, and saw horizon beget horizon. He knew the vision around him revolved from where he stood; that he was the central fact of things; that indeed it was he that sent the world spinning. His thoughts propelled the movement of the cities, the commerce, and the expansion of all the information that we see and know. He was Reason and surely all things revolved around Reason.

Until the trembling began.  From below him the ground shook and continued shaking until he was toppled from his center, and there arose in his place another, whose vision of the horizon circumscribed his until his were but the tiniest ripples in the pond and the new man’s the outermost.

The new man reveled in his place of centrality.  His eyes inscribed wider and wider circles for he was Understanding and he knew that Reason was useless without him.  Indeed, he knew that he himself—Understanding–ruled the world.  And thus he stood, slowly turning and scanning the horizons, admiring the width of all that was his.

And then the ground again began to quake.  It took longer for Understanding to teeter off his center, but teeter he did as the ground below him opened and up pushed a woman dusting off her skirt and blouse.  Gradually she realized her place.  Her eyes adjusted to the vastness around her.  Her vision of the surrounding horizon quickly outran the first two men’s and the circles of her understanding stretched much further than theirs.  For she was Beauty and she knew that without her, Reason and Understanding were nothing.  Understanding fell in love with her and from their union Wisdom was born.  And Wisdom thought herself unconquerable, as she stared out over the vast expanse of land, while the other three stood helplessly in her shadow.  Until another woman rose from the depth, more beautiful than Wisdom.  Her name was Power. And Wisdom and Power were both beautiful, more beautiful than Beauty herself.  And each woman’s vision of beauty was eclipsed by the other’s, making the other’s seem almost insignificant. 

And so on and so on, woman after woman, man after man were born, each making the circles of the last seem tiny and impermanent, as if drawn in the sand. And each had their own spin on the ever-expanding vision: Intelligence, Beauty, Philosophy, Science, Feelings, Industry, Religion, Character, and more than a few employed variations of Truth to grow their horizons, but even these were outrun by greater visions of Truth that appeared with every new generation.  Some even reached back and pulled the visions of Truth from the pages of history and the world rejoiced in the seeming newness of the old until, at last, these too gave way to even greater circle of progress.

Yet it did not escape a single one of the people standing in the circles within circles that the horizon had become a kind of prison—a border, a boundary that they could never scale.  If they moved closer it moved away, and some of the people began to feel trapped, hopeless, caged.  People began to notice that the earth no longer shook when a new visionary arose.  A thin, metal flavor of futility began appearing in everything they ate or drank.  Panic spread as a gray dust began coating everything over time. And then the wars began.

Reason attacked Understanding and Intelligence attacked Philosophy, Logic tried to stomp them all, as did Feelings.  And Feelings seemed to be winning all the battles until Religion stepped in and began attacking Beauty and this calmed things down for awhile, until Science attacked Religion.  But then each successive Religion began believing their own vision to be the circumscriber of all other horizons and began belittling the others and very soon they too were at war, and once the wars over Religion bloomed, all hell broke loose and pretty soon the horizon came to be known as Death and everyone tried to run towards their own center to escape that final horizon that seemed to both draw closer to them and roll elusively away.  And it was this dance of Death coming closer and moving away that drove many of the people mad because they could not reconcile a horizon that expanded and contracted in such horrible waves.  And millennia passed, and things seemed very dark indeed. 

And then there was another opening, only this one came from above.  The sky opened the immense blue curtains laced with white to reveal a light so dazzling the world seemed to slow and to stop.  The light descended as a sphere, glowing and vibrating with an unseen bell and an invisible harp.  And as the sphere touched the ground, it burst revealing a child—a child so radiant the horizon lines began to dissolve and the people turned away from them and towards this new center.  They found themselves bending their knees and falling upon their faces. 

“Arise,” said the child, “I am not an idol.  I am not to be worshipped.”

“Then why have you come?  Are you not our salvation?” the people asked.

“I have come to bring you a gift.  And it is not salvation.  Salvation is only the storing up of your souls in some distant place, and that is what you have all been doing already and what have you gained?”

“Some say we have gained eternal life.” said the people.

“But look around you.  You see the horizon you call Death approaching.  That is your eternity.  No, the gift I bring demands you open the storehouses of your souls and spill yourselves over into one another, flooding the horizon with the combined force of your letting go.”

The people were speechless.  They had never heard such talk. 

“But what is this gift you bring?” They finally asked, “What is the gift that will blend us with one another in such a way as to dissolve the horizon?”

“It is a trinity,” said the child, “it is a gift in three parts.  Use them separately and you shall have great joy, use them together and your joy shall be unending and the horizon will never threaten you again.  It will become what it is—yourselves.  The horizon is simply an extension of you.  And if you fear the horizon it is because you fear yourselves—you fear the limitless within yourselves.  You fear your own true power.”

“The gift,” the people cried, “what is the gift?”

“It is a trinity made up of Innocence, Play, and Wonder.  And it is called Love.  And Its nature is to give and to share.  It is to create and to merge together.  It is to dream unending dreams of unity and service, delight and commitment, possibilities and hope.  It is to Create.”

The people were stunned.  They stood there and suddenly realized they no longer feared the horizon.  When they turned to look it seemed much closer, like a breath, like a touch.  And it was no longer threatening and it was no longer a cage.  It had somehow transformed into an actual vision of Wonder and this vision blossomed with a fragrance of adventure that drew all of the various people together.  Reason and Understanding walked hand in hand with Beauty and Religion and Science.  Even Truth joined hands with Character and became inseparable.  And all because Love had come.  Love had entered the circle as a child and became the circle.

 Love, as given by the child in the forms of Innocence, Play, and Wonder, had loosened the souls from their bounds and blessed them to run together like beautiful rivers towards a horizon that was at once within them and without.  It was Now and it was Evermore. 

And the horizon’s name even changed.  It became known as The Ocean of Possibilities.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

There was the seemingly insatiable hunger for the bizarre, the twisted, the perverse, and the terrifying.  Ingesting these somehow fueled the desire for light and more light—not a recommended daily-allowance diet–but it worked for him because there was grace and mercy woven through it all. Nothing else could transform such food into glorious nourishment.

There was the thirst for touch combined with a shockingly violent aversion to it.  Touches came and then the instantaneous flashing recoil—like a frightened snake.

And yet, through all of this, the most telling signs were the flowers, the moon, the fireflies, and the toads, the appearances of the praying mantis tilting her triangular shaped face, while she preened her front claws; there were the appearances of the slender, golden koi with their wise, whiskered faces and their flowing fins that trilled in the dark waters, where years before nothing stirred. 

So even though the darkness shrouded him like a silken cocoon, even though he felt himself dissolving into the liquid of grieving, even though parts of his heart hardened, he could sense the temporary nature of it all.  He could sense wings forming in his back—with little, unscratchable itches between his shoulder blades; he could sense signals of being able to move great pages of appendages that were not yet visible.

And there was the light, especially the light of the fireflies that made it alright for the wound to widen.  There was something in their dazzling flashes of brilliance—staccato signals of visible Morse Code, tiny celebratory fireworks, little bits and pieces of some unseen bonfire rising into the summer night. 

And the darkness–sweet, blessed darkness that made it all so.

He came to love the darkness.  The darkness held such wonder.

Like the time he drove down highway 179 in Sedona at midnight for the first time.  He did not know he was surrounded by mountains.  All he could see was the barely-lit road ahead, and all he could think of was: “Where am I going? Where is the exit?”

He did not know he was being watched by the gentlest of souls, towering and majestic, yet bending towards him.  He did not know they were there, and yet, sheltering him from other storms they stood, and to keep up with him, they picked up their ancient skirts and cloaks and followed him with silent, graceful movements.  There were no earthquakes or avalanches—just mountains that both stood and danced around him in the darkness, guiding and keeping him from harm.  They were more than sentinels; they were angels of the greatest tenderness.

And so when he watched the fireflies rising from the cemetery grass, like souls dancing in the night, when he saw the fireflies garland the tops of the trees, he knew the darkness inside was good, provided he never lose his ability to sense the light. 

For this darkness held the seeds of light.  This darkness nursed beings of light.  This darkness WAS the light in its first flush and flower.

And that gift of being able to sense the light was given to him by countless angels along the way.  They would meet him in unexpected places, cup their hands together and pass the light to him—soul to soul, cupped hands to cupped hands spreading the wonder of the light.

So when the water broke and the tears came in a sudden flood, and the contractions curled him up on the floor, and when the pain—that deep, relentless pain flashed and exploded within him—somewhere inside he held on to the great and terrible hands of the mountains, somehow he held the light of the fireflies in his voice, and starlight in his tears…and then…

…almost without realizing it, almost without a sound

the child was born.

stillness bloomed.

 A calmness that walked the borders of bliss thrummed the air like a harp of gladness.

And the singing began.  The words flowed—images and silver threads, weaving it all together into a living, organic tapestry of such grand fluidity that he could only ease back and watch in wonder.

And as he listened to the child singing and speaking the Word, the child suddenly turned and faced him, and held out his hand saying: “Rise, dear fathermother, we are one and we must go—adventure beckons.  For there are many others in the throes of labor, and we must find them and midwife them into the world.”

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog