People believed in him. They wanted to believe in the Dream, and he was proof that it was true. His name was Francis, and he lived and died quietly and peacefully in Assisi. When the light of the spirit was dying out all over the world, this man, this little man, this one man, re-enkindled the flame. He was only forty-five years old when he died, but he left behind a Dream to dream and a Journey to challenge everyone. This book is my own Dream and my own Journey with Francis. My prayer is that the Dream will come clear for you, that you will be challenged, too, to set out on a Journey with Francis to that Peace and Joy that surpasses all understanding. But when you do, remember:
Both are important,
The Journey and the Dream,
The coming out and the entering in.
Without the Journey
The Dream is a futile entering into yourself
Where you ride a monotonous wheel
That spins around you alone.
With the Journey
The entering in is itself a Journey
that does not end inside you
But passes through the self and
Out the other side of you
Where you ride the wheel
You found inside.
To remain inside too long
Makes the Journey a fairytale Odyssey
And the Dream becomes illusion.
The wheel must spin on the real road
Where your Dream leads you.
To remain on the road too long
Dims the Dream until you no longer see it
And the road replaces the Dream.
The Journey and the Dream
Are one balanced act of love
And both are realized
Outside the mind.
—from the book Francis: The Journey and the Dream
by Murray Bodo, OFM
