Miracles News

May-August, 2026

Remembering the Dreamer

by Rev. Bill Poppa, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I am 67 years old, which means I have been watching the world’s conflicts unfold for as long as I can remember. When I was five years old, I remember sitting in front of the television as the nation watched the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For days the coverage continued, culminating in the shocking moment when Lee Harvey Oswald himself was shot on live television. Not long after, the Vietnam War filled our living rooms each evening as the nightly news reported the body count of American soldiers. Even as a child, it was impossible not to feel that something about the world was deeply unsettled.

The 1960s brought a cultural upheaval as well. Protests and riots filled the streets while a younger generation began questioning the institutions their parents had trusted. At the same time, music carried a different message. Dylan and the folk singers gave voice to a longing for truth and peace, while The Beatles symbolized a generation searching for a new way to live. Yet conflict never seemed to leave the stage.

Before I was born, two world wars had already taken tens of millions of lives. The Great Depression and devastating droughts reshaped the early twentieth century. In my own lifetime I have watched the Cold War dominate global politics, and later the attacks of 9/11 change the course of history. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed, reshaping geopolitics for decades. And even now the pattern continues. Drug cartels destabilize regions closer to home, global powers reposition themselves, and old geopolitical ideas like the Monroe Doctrine are quietly reconsidered. As I write, the war rages on in the Middle East.

The players change, but the stage remains the same. The ego, much like the law of gravity, always seems to steal the show.

And yet A Course in Miracles offers a completely different interpretation. It teaches that the world we see is not the cause of our suffering but the projection of a mind that believes it has separated from God. Conflict, whether between nations or individuals, reflects that deeper belief in separation.

The miracle does not fix the dream. It simply reminds the mind that it is the dreamer, not the dream. Through forgiveness, perception begins to shift. What once looked like enemies become mirrors. What once appeared as chaos becomes a classroom.

The Holy Spirit gently reminds us that we are not victims of the world we see. We are the dreamer of the dream. And as the dreamer begins to awaken, something remarkable happens. The world may still appear to move through its familiar cycles of conflict and reconciliation, but the mind that once felt trapped within it begins to experience peace.

I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, that forgiveness is not something we offer the world. It is the quiet way the mind remembers it was never separate from God. And in that remembering, something else becomes clear. Though forgiveness is not something we offer the world, it is nonetheless the salvation of the world.

Not because the world has changed, but because the dreamer has.

Until the dream ends completely, forgiveness remains our practice. It is the quiet way the Light returns to memory. As the Course reminds us:

Forgiveness is the key to happiness. (W-pI.121.13:6)

And perhaps that is the miracle hidden beneath the long arc of human history: even when the ego appears to steal the show, the Light of Christ quietly reminds the dreamer that nothing was ever lost.

Rev. Bill Poppa is a Pathways of Light minister living in New Orleans, LA.
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