I woke, and all the kingless world was bleak.
I slept, and earth was governed by the meek.
I woke, and there was roaring from the south.
I slept, and children stopped the lion’s mouth.
I woke, and saw the locust eat the wheat.
I slept, and wept before the mercy seat.
I know I sojourn in the land of seem.
But which is real, my God? And which the dream?
From The Locust Years (Wiseblood, 2025). Used by permission of the publisher.
In his succinct poem “The Dream,” Paul J. Pastor reflects on the dissonance between our earthbound reality—marked by misrule, violence, and famine—and the new-earthly reality that awaits us when Christ returns. Which is truer, more ultimately solid? This present bleakness, or the long-dreamt-of future that we see glimpses of throughout the scriptures, in the visions of prophets and the words and deeds of Jesus?
The poem reminds me of these lines from George MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul:
Lord, in the land of things that swell and seem,
Help me to walk by the other light supreme,
Which shows thy facts behind man’s vaguely hinting dream.
And Samwise Gamgee’s oft-quoted question from Tolkien’s Return of the King, which Christian eschatology answers in the affirmative: “Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
“The Dream” comes from Pastor’s latest collection, The Locust Years, most of which was written from 2020 to 2024, a time of pandemic, increasingly intense political polarization in the US, and, as Pastor mentions in the opening, for him, personal grief. The book’s title is a reference to Joel 2:25, where God promises his people, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten . . .”
Paul J. Pastor is a poet, writer, and editor whose work uncovers the inner life of the world as experienced in nature, literature, and the rich traditions of historic Christian spirituality. In addition to two volumes of poetry—The Locust Years and Bower Lodge—he is also the author of A Kids Book About God, The Listening Day, and The Face of the Deep. He is an executive editor for Nelson Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, and he lives in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge with his wife and three children.
Art & Theology 