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