One using words wrongly or in their usual way might say that everything had taken on a dreamlike quality. No, but it had all lost its old nightmarish quality. It had all taken on, not a dreamlike quality, but the quality of reality.
There was, of course, the acre of fire, the field of fire. This acre was large enough to contain all that needed to be contained: it is always there, wherever reality is. There are tides that come and go; but even the lowest ebbing may not mean the end of the world. And then there are the times and tides of clarity, the jubilees, the sabbaticals. There is reassurance given. The world turns in its sleep, and parts of the world have moments of wakefulness.
Ten million bees had not brought all the wax for that acre of fire, and yet it was a very carefully structured fire in every tongue and flame of it. It was the benevolent illumination and fire of reality. It was all very clear, for being in the middle of a mystery. White night turned into white dawn; and the people all moved easily into the fire, their pomposities forgiven, their eyes open.
The Mysterious Master and Maker of the Worlds came again and walked upon this world in that Moment. He often does so. The Moment is recurring but undivided.
No, we do not say that it was Final Morning. We are not out of it so easily as that. But the moment is all one. Pleasantly into the fire that is reality then! It will sustain through all the lean times of flimsiness before and after.
-R. A. Lafferty, 'And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire' (1972)
