I grew up in a magical place, nestled in the boughs of several trees.
Only many decades later have I learned that such magical places are doors that are opened but for a very short season by God, and then they disappear from the universe, leaving only traces of their memory behind. But I have also discovered that even these ephemeral traces of adolescence carry enough residual power to last a lifetime.
As a boy, I had begged my dad for months to help me build a tree house in the lush green deciduous woodlands of northeastern Oklahoma, just across a wide prairie that touched the verdant flanks of Concharty Mountain in the near distance. These were the lands of my Native American heritage.
My dad fulfilled my dreams, and on the elevated wooden deck, I learned many things. Among them, I became aware that there is a certain power in prescient visions of the future. A real power to forge a whole life.
Whether that life has any significance to anyone else is irrelevant to the youthful vision, for it is the real power of the primal impression itself that is so ultimately significant to the dreamer and lend the courage to drive him ahead into the vagueness of his future.
My first, most profound impressions as a young man came from the morning view through the trees. From my tree house perspective, the world around me, as I would view it for the rest of my life, took shape. I will never forget it or its impact on me – the morning light filtering through the gentle mist; the brilliant, vernal sunlight; the purity of the green leaves through the wild grape and black-jack hickory; the power of height and separation from the ground; and the deep satisfaction that ultimately arose from the creative acts of planning, building, and then occupying a work of my own hands – an idea that had sprung into real existence out of nothing but a hopeful dream. These dreams would persist and repeat themselves throughout my life as they still do today.
Here I had built my own personal sanctuary in the hostile jungle, and from here I was the beneficent surveyor of my own private world. The birds that sang only to me, the squirrel whose nest I patiently allowed in my tree, and my dog, Max, who genuinely loved me enough to stand a faithful watch on the ground beneath. It was the ultimate fugue of boyhood – a hormonal expression of dawning manhood in its most fundamental, emotionless analysis.
And yet it represented the primal power I would clearly understand and wholly depend on for the rest of my life. It would be that same yearning to experience the purity of that moment – of control over my world, of ownership, of the ultimate conquest of the creative act – the creation of another world of my very own making. Even as I write this as a Templar to my fellow poor soldiers of Christ (a reality I never dreamed of, even in my wildest creative boyhood fantasies), that yearning has never departed from me. It is more than a memory now – it is my day-to-day reality.
Alas, yes – adolescent dreams are also but selfish dreams. In the acceptable maturity of society, there is no tolerance except for the owned and the controlled. Yet, the boy is not yet offended by this misplaced social folderol. It is an error he comes to be taught later. Hence, without such superficial knowledge, there remains only the towering edifice of innocence and his lofty dreams.
He represents the purity of raw genetic guidance without the blurring of the social conscience. Yet, while I love the moral code I have embraced as an adult, and see that it is the only hope of mankind to survive the adolescent dream itself, I still long to recapture the purest innocent moment of the youthful dream. And, by the grace of God, I frequently do.
Sometimes, when I am alone, I think about that platform in the tree. I wonder about the hours, days, and years gone by, and the serial heartbreak of innocence lost. I ponder deeply the cacophony of life’s many voices, the often conflicting and confusing philosophies of the ages, of personal disappointment, of the deep and confusing inconsistencies inside, of hatred and war, and of fathomless pain I have encountered since the trees, many of them for which there is no half-life.
But, I am in awe and wonder of the Godsent treasure of the purest kind of love that can easily be found in the recesses of the human heart alongside a true supernatural Peace that is possible even in the most bitter of life’s storms.
Yet, through the noise of life, from within the deepening pile of memories that has obscured primal innocence, often, I can still resolve the power of the adolescent dream – even through the encroaching mists of time. And I have frequently prayed for the wisdom to mine its depths, to fully recover its influence and, somehow, leave its selfishness behind.
So, what do a boy’s treehouse dreams have to do with modern Templars?
Everything!
For you see, beloved, our Priory of The Temple Church is an idea that sprang into existence out of nothing but a hopeful dream. Now we may dwell inside its elevated structure to dream other realities into existence every single day. And these visions are anything but selfish, for they are hammered into tangible plans to make families who live across whole oceans and continents from us relatively secure simply because we dream – and then we fashion those dreams into action and power that extends across oceans.
It is, in fact, our job to make these new realities come to pass by our love for Christian families we shall likely never meet this side of the New Jerusalem. These are supernaturally empowered dreams made up of pure kindness; of selfless things that uplift and bring security, joy, and laughter – things from which new families are created for many generations ahead.
And all those things, all those precious gifts dreamed up out of the void of life, springing forth from nothing but the grace of God – it’s what we do.
Even as a lad in the trees, I never dreamed that near the end of my extraordinarily blessed existence on this planet, my life would be described and recorded in Heaven’s Books as the life of a Templar Knight. Nor could I have imagined that it would possibly be so satisfyingly sweet.
I just wish Max could be here to share all this with me….