Last night I dreamed the kind of dream I had feared dreaming twenty years ago, when Reagan taunted the Soviets and the struggle for peace was about nukes and not terrorists. I never had that dream then; I’ve had it now.

I was in a cave, like many found along the Oregon coast under the high cliffs facing the Pacific. I was with two or three men, and we were looking at something — a tv monitor, I don’t remember. (This seems to be the appropriate place to mention that I am making up none of this; it is exactly as I dreamed, to the best of my recollection.) One of the men was George W Bush; whether he was President or not, I don’t know. He was wearing casual clothes, and he was talking with the other two men about what they were watching.

I guess I wasn’t interested; I was paying no attention to their words, and I remember nothing of what was being discussed in the cave. I went outside onto the beach; it was night and lovely. I looked up, and a glowing light the size of the full moon suddenly went streaking across the sky. A shooting star, and it was enormous! It was so exciting; I knew I should call the others, but I was unable to speak. Finally, though, I did call, and they got to me just as it disappeared. They looked to where I pointed: the south, the horizon, visible as a lightless mass against the dark, dark blue of the night sky. But there was nothing to be seen, and they turned to return to the cave.

And as I continued to look, the thought that had been in my mind from the moment I first saw the shooting star became irresistable: What if? What if it’s not a shooting star? What if…? That thought, the one that has troubled millions of people since the Manhattan Project proved how much destruction we could do if we set our minds, and hearts, to it. What if that jet is…? What if that boom is…? What if that little light…? What if they push the wrong…? What if, again and again, fear that has eaten away the world’s soul for over six decades. Fear that has not gone away, and simply has new forms: a smuggled suitcase rather than an ICBM. Fear.

And I look to that southern horizon with the fear in my mind, but telling myself sternly how silly that was, it wasn’t, couldn’t be … that. It just couldn’t be. But it was, and the light, and the mushroom cloud, and the rolling wave of death, too far away to hurt me (and now I was kneeling in the sand, wondering about radiation), all of it, just like a bad movie, only it was real. (And it was real. I wanted to believe I was asleep, that it was just a dream, but I was not waking up. I was already awake, and the pure reality of what I was seeing was my proof. This was not a dream, and I was watching the world end.)

But for a few moments, perhaps a full minute, it was just the one bomb, far away, and all I had to fear was possible radiation poisoning. Then, of course, the next one exploded, and the next, and the next, one after another, each one closer to me. The men in the cave were screaming, or perhaps that was me, and my eyes were fixed on the nearest horizon, the horizon to the west. I was waiting for the one that would wash across me and burn me into eternity. When it came, I was calm. I was sad, and I was puzzled how this might have actually, finally happened, but I didn’t not run. What would be the point? I saw the bomb explode that would kill me, and I bowed into the sand and waited.

Why I had that dream last night, I don’t know. I rarely have dreams this vivid and memorable; this may be the fifth in my life. The others were not about the end of the world; they were about love and how it just never quite works out. (And maybe it’s just the same damn dream.) I have absolutely no idea why Dubya was in there; I assume my subconscious likes screwing with me. I know I dream every night, and I almost never remember them the next morning. Perhaps I dream of world annihilation on a regular basis. But this dream — it was extraordinary. I experienced none of the usual noise of life, all those distractions that keeps us from being fully present in the now. In my dream, I was as present as I wish I could be in my waking life. I felt the moments and the waiting and the anticipation and certainty with such clarity I had no choice of denail. I felt the sand as I knelt, but I never felt the burn of the bomb’s touch.

Peace is not a political concept. Peace is the choice of life. To reject the choice of violence and war is to stand for life, and no matter what the warmongers and the “realists” say, all war does is kill and destory. This is the truth of Thich Nhat Hanh’s proclamation, one that I keep above my bed where I dreamed this dream: There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

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