Unshackled

The vision opens with you in the water. It's tragically clear blue and thankfully salty; your arms are tired from treading water and your legs feel heavy and useless, but you've managed to keep your head above the bubbly ripples this whole time.  Saltwater makes for great buoyancy, and you're still here. So that's some kind of victory- regardless of how exhausted you are.

Behind you and to your left, there's nothing but more ocean, a vast landscape of quiet undulation that embraces the cloudless blue sky. To your right, there's an impenetrable, inhospitable cliff. It runs to the horizon and reminds you of the Great Wall of China, although you've never actually seen the Great Wall of China. You know it extends further than it should, that it's meant to keep you where you are; that it is both necessary and unhelpful given your current predicament.

Because what lies before you, the only thing other than the vast ocean or endless barrier of land, is an immense tree. It's roots are impossibly submerged in the clear blue water. This shouldn't even be here based on everything you know about the plants you've managed to kill so easily over the years.  Trees like this don't grow in the ocean. It doesn't belong here.  It expands to the heavens, far taller than the cliffs, but its wide and wild branches are too high and too far away from the cliffs to provide any kind of exit strategy.  The only place you can go, in fact, is toward the tree. It rivals the giant sequoias in California- three or four would easily fit inside.  That's what makes the dark, cavernous opening at its base so terrifying.

Here is where faith comes in; there is nothing else you can do but hope that something is in there that'll help you.  That you'll be able to get out of the water, rest your arms, and maybe feel your legs again.  Based on your experience, though, you're almost sure that being outside of that tree is better than being inside of it. In the past, you thought you had faith. You prayed and waited for answers, and you followed signs, but it all felt like one big trick after the next. Like God was punking you, and the world was laughing.  So, your choices —they're not great.  And when you're tired, when the salt water stings your eyes and you know your throat is useless because there's no one listening if you scream for help, faith becomes the practice of believing that whatever fresh new hell may lie ahead of you, it could be better just because it's different.  So what if it's snakes or a dragon or apocalyptic ruin or nothing at all... You have to find out what's in that cave because it's really the only choice that's left.

You will your arms to carry your heavy body forward.  There seems to be a current helping you, a tide that kicked in when you decided to enter the really-odd-supermassive-tree-cave. You're propelled forward and eventually find yourself walking out of the water into the white sand that's dancing orange in the light of multiple little bonfires.  All around the bonfires are people, and you recognize them. They're your ancestors.  The older ones look like shadowy grey silhouettes, like etchings in metal and old photographs.  The newest ancestor is also the most vivid; it's your paternal grandfather, and he's not at all surprised to see you. He says your name the way he did when he was alive, with an 'l' on the end. You're taking in how vivid and real he looks- and you're remembering the age in his body the last time you hugged him because you knew it was going to be the last time- but this isn't that guy.  This is the grandpa from when you were five or six or seven or eleven, the version of him that was strong and wiry and talked so fast it was hard to catch what he was saying.  

"It's all true, and it's all false," he says, as if he can tell you're thinking about what it's like to be talking to him.

You ask him what that means, and without words, he explains to you that where he is- the place we like to think of as heaven- is everything he knew it would be by the faith he held, and so much more that it makes the magnificence of faith look small and inconsequential.  He's happy, where he is, and he wants you to know that he's always right here, waiting for you on the other side.

It feels like a family reunion as your ancestors quietly communicate with you, and you realize that in the middle of the beach, in the middle of the cave, in the middle of this massive tree is a spiral staircase.  It's made of impossibly blonde wood, almost white, and in stark contrast to the dark green-grey-black-brown hues of the tree itself. It reminds you of the miraculous staircase in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe - there are no railings and no support beams, just steps that seem to expand upward into a vertical tunnel inside this tree. It's both magnificent and terrifying.

There's another ancestor, one you've encountered before. Her name in life was Patience Steedman Boatwright, and she's the equivalent of a hug from your mom when you've suffered some minor-but-it-seems-major injury as a young child.  When she "speaks", it sounds the way your mother's voice would drift into an echo just outside your body when you're leaning on her as you fall asleep; a phenomenon that you personally believe to be your mind's way of reminding you that your mother was once the safest place in the world to be, before the trauma of birth befell you.

She's 'telling' you that you have to take the natural next step.  You have to ascend the staircase, because it's here for you. It is yours.  Your birthright, your miracle, your creation. You hesitate, and then you move toward the base of the staircase.  

"My legs are so heavy," you say to her. "I'm tired from all the swimming, and my legs are so very heavy."

She laughs a little and smiles, and gestures to your feet.

"Of course they're heavy.  Look at what you're carrying."

You look down to see shackles around your ankles. They're sparkling in the dim amber light of the bonfires. Attached to the shackles are chains, chains that it seems you've dragged up. Attached to the chains, still touched by the light ebb and flow of waves that have kissed the beach, are round cannonball-like weights.  It's hard to see them all clearly, all tangled in the surf behind you. Some are little, the size of golf balls. Several are the size of grapefruits.  A few, like basketballs.  Your eyes have adjusted to the ambience, and you can barely make out words carved on each weight. Guilt. Fear. Shame. Some of them are inscribed with the names of people in your life.

You feel defeated before you even look back at Patience. It makes sense now, your exhaustion from surviving, but what are you supposed to do? These things were always yours to carry, weren't they?

Without having to voice those questions, Patience wills you to look past your other ancestors, the obscure ones made of a misty substance that looks like fog but feels like pure love. 

There, on the wall of this tree-cave, is a key.

In a blink or an instant or an eternity, the key is in her hand and she's offering it to you.

"Is it really that easy?" you ask.

She nods, and raises the key a bit higher, a bit closer.  She's offering freedom.

It's that easy. She says without words.

You take the key and stretch down into a forward fold. The shackles fall to the sand, and you step forward.

Still...

The staircase before you hasn't changed in its imposition. It's massive, and there's nothing to keep you from falling off. And how far are you supposed to climb anyway?

The ancestors collectively tell you to have faith. Just take the first step, then take another.  Focus on what's in front of you.

So you climb.

And climb.

And climb.

You can still feel the ancestors there on the beach, but you've now left them far behind. Their voices stick with you, though, they urge you on when you feel dizzy or unsure. They remind you about how far you've come, and that they're trying to show you so much more.

So you climb.

And you climb.

And the light that went from firelight dim to pitch dark in the belly of the tree-cave begins to fill with light.  It's subtle at first, like a kiss on the forehead. But with each step, it grows brighter, stronger. You think you should be worried about sunburn, but you left Worry on a grapefruit-sized iron weight back on the beach, so you can't quite conjure up that feeling. It's then that you realize the gravity of the things you've unshackled yourself from- the ability to separate yourself from the things that weigh you down is a superpower. And suddenly you feel powerful. You feel light. You feel held, and heard, and understood by the universe.

The last step is now under your unshackled left foot, and with your next step, you reach a platform that seems to be a balcony, but it's hard to tell, fully cloaked in bright white light.  It should be disorienting, but it feels like home. 

The bright light gives way, or your consciousness adjusts to it, or- who knows. There aren't words for what you're experiencing. 

You're on a balcony now, that is suspended from a star, mid-universe. You can see everything from here. Everything.

It's like a new toy, a new telescope- like taking the bandages off of your eyes after some kind of surgery. The ancestors are all behind you now, urging you to take this baby for a ride. You can see anything you want, they tell you. You can look into any memory of the past or moment of the future from here.  You can zoom into any location, any atom, any miracle of your choosing.

All you have to do is have faith.

And then you wake up.

(Picture generated by AI. Words were NOT.)