Here are some words on Destiny from David Whyte:

Strangely, every person always lives out their destiny no matter what they do, according to the way they shape the conversation, but that destiny may be lived out on the level of consummation or complete frustration, through experiencing a homecoming or having to endure a distant sense of exile, or more likely some gradation along the spectrum that lies between.

So let’s see: Consummation of our destiny or frustration—which sounds better to you?

Along with frustration comes discouragement. Discouragement questions whether fulfillment will ever come in one’s own experience.

What is it that determines whether a person’s experience will be the consummation of destiny or frustration? The word homecoming points to the crucial factor. But what is it to which we are coming home? Sometimes people who have fastened themselves to an earthly home become only small-minded and prejudiced. So going to an earthly home is no guaranty of the consummation of our destiny. The real homecoming is to the reality of who we are. We come home when we come to know that who we are is at home wherever we are.

This is the very nature of Truth. The Truth is that there is a home that transcends the earthly place in which we live. Call it heaven, call it a realm of quantum potentiality, call it whatever you like. By whatever name, it is a realm of possibility and essence that we touch. It is the design of the invisible reality of Being that can manifest on earth if we let it.

The heavenly home is like the blueprint to a beautiful building. It contains the design of the building in an essential form. If all goes well, the essential design becomes the actual, manifest design of the building so that people can enjoy the beauty and function of that design. There are not many people who could look at the blueprint and see that beauty and function; only a trained architect, engineer or construction manager. But once the design inherent in the blueprint is manifest in the building, there it is for all to see.

This is a picture of the design of Truth in the human experience. But what is it that lets the invisible design of Being become the manifest design of a human world? What is it that lets the heavenly home become the reality of the manifest home in which we live? It is us, the one who reads the invisible blueprint of life and allows it to manifest in the world. And you don’t need to be an architect to do it.

You may know home in your own dwelling. Collectively our home may be a community. Our home may be a nation. Sometimes a nation is referred to as a homeland; we have Homeland Security here in the United States. Ultimately, the whole earth is home for humanity. So when I use the word home I’m using it in the largest sense. Every value that you can imagine in terms of the living of your life does come to focus in that one little word, home. Here is the opportunity for us as humanity—the whole earth can be our home. It seems like a fanciful dream because that is clearly not what is happening now.

This is a picture of Truth. The invisible design of Being is a reality to be perceived and lived into and then made manifest in the world. In between those two realities is human consciousness. For us personally, it is the world of our own thought and feeling. You connect with the invisible design of Truth when you touch the possibility that’s available to you in your life—the reality that is yet to be born in your own experience, that you don’t yet see all around you but which you sense is possible. It has some kind of shape to it, some kind of essence. It inspires feelings in the heart—an aspiration, a desire, a passion. There is a pattern and a design to the invisible reality that is yet to be manifest. It may seem like an ephemeral thing, a thing of essence that one hopes could one day actually be manifest in your life, through the people around you, through the circumstances in which you’re living. It may come to your mind as a vision of home, of bounty, of love, of enjoyment.

Humanity also holds collective dreams that are born out of the invisible reality of Being. They may relate to a family, a community, an organization or a nation. Some people even share a dream for the whole world.

One of the early Puritans who came to America and became the governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, spoke of his vision of America this way: “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”

The dreams of nations are sometimes embodied in their national anthems—not only the officially adopted anthem but one that is nonetheless embraced by people who share the dream that the anthem expresses. These lyrics are from “America the Beautiful,” written by Katharine Lee Bates:

O beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful, for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

These words are from the South African national anthem:

From the blue of our skies,
From the depth of our sea,
Over everlasting mountains,
Where the echoing crags resound
Sounds the call to come together,
And united we shall stand.
Let us live and strive for freedom
In South Africa, our land!

I know the land of Nelson Mandela yearns and longs for that unity, to be the place that Nelson Mandela envisioned it could be, where black and white and people of all colors and religions come together as one people, becoming a symbol for the world, themselves a shining city. The current reality in South Africa doesn’t match that dream.

This anthem is from Norway:

Yes, we love this country
as it rises forth,
rugged, weathered, above the water,
with the thousands of homes,—
love, love it and think
of our father and mother
and the saga-night that lays
dreams upon our earth.
And the saga-night that lays
dreams upon our earth.

And here is a folk anthem from Australia:

I came from the Dreamtime
From the dusty red soil plains
I am the ancient heart
The keeper of the flames
I stood upon the rocky shore
I watched the tall ships come
For forty thousand years I’ve been the first Australian.

We are one
But we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We’ll share a dream
And sing with one voice
I am, you are, we are Australian.

These anthems touch the possibility for humanity that is deep in the hearts of all men and all women. They touch the hopes and dreams for home to be experienced among a nation. We think about our own country perhaps, but it is not just about our country. It is about this whole earth. We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come.

In the English language, the invisible reality of home has sometimes been referred to as heaven. It has also been called the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. The key question for a human life is this: How does that invisible home become a reality in manifest form?

As human beings we are right in the middle of the answer to that question. If there’s a dimension of Truth that is the design of that heavenly home and there’s a dimension of Truth that is the design of what’s actually happening in our lives as they are, we are what connects them. More specifically, the invisible design reigns in our own experience when we allow it to guide and direct us, and so come through our expression—our thoughts, words and actions. Then we become the control of Truth that lets heaven reign in the world. Then the heavenly home becomes a reality on earth.

There are three words that sound the same as the word reign. Reign, rein and rain. Each one has a different meaning that is relevant to this process. We reign in our own home on earth when we accept the reins of heaven, when we let ourselves be guided by that inner reality. And when we are truly reigning in our home, the reality of the invisible home comes down like rain through us. All that potentiality! All that beauty! All that Love!

We reign on earth as king and queen of our kingdom, of our world, of our home. Our individual world becomes a home because we are that king or we are that queen who reigns in that kingdom. How else would it be? There is dominion in one’s own earth, one’s own physical body and one’s own human experience. There are control factors out of the heaven that are operating through me that bring control in my own physical earth and they reign in my kingdom. Let Love reign.

For Love to reign in my kingdom, it has to be expressed and extended and operating through me as the focal point for my home. I have to be that king, and you have to be that king or that queen in your kingdom for the heavenly Truth to become the earthly Truth. Heavenly design becomes earthly design when it goes through the focal point of control that’s operative in our human experience. Out-of-control human being, no heavenly home on earth.

In the world as it is today there is all kinds of chaos and increasing extremism. There are polarities locked in conflict. We don’t have the Cold War as it was, but even today we have the United States and Russia locked in conflict, bringing horrible misery to the country of Syria.

In the American presidential primaries there is extremism that has just gone totally amok. We could blame it on George W. Bush’s political advisor, Karl Rove, who developed a strategy of appealing to the extreme conservatism in America. Prevailing political thought in both parties had favored leading closer to the political center. But the idea that Republicans could hike way out to the right and gather a following there was pursued strongly with Karl Rove and George Bush. Arguably, that strategy has caught up with the Republican Party, to the point that there is such extremism and such mean-spirited polarity that some are considering the possibility of a poison-pill solution in which traditional Republicans would abandon the party and reconstitute it under a new banner.

But this is not all because of Karl Rove and I am not blaming it all on the Republicans. The same thing is going on all throughout the political system. There is, increasingly, a temptation to go negative and to go extreme. And it’s happening all through the political debate, to the point where much of the political dialogue has become asinine. Despite an occasional attempt to be inspiring, so much of politics is not an expression of the dream for America. Politicians are not being driven by the ideals that come out of that dream. Consequently, in place of enlightened governance there is chaos in which global financial interests have the opportunity to determine the future of the country, with little challenge.

This lack of good governance leads to frustration, disillusionment and dismay from our citizens. For Americans looking at this, or for anyone who has eyes to see, it is easy to wonder, What is this country coming to?

But it isn’t just our politics. I notice extremism in my own immediate world, in my own kingdom, in my own home. I notice people locked in conflict, going to opposite ends of a polarity, not coming to center, not reigning as the king or the queen of one’s world so that the heavenly home can be known as the earthly home.

For anyone to reign, they have to accept the reins from within themselves. They have to embrace the control factors that are naturally present when we are driven by the possibility that we’re in touch with. When we feel that heavenly reality and the possibility of it manifesting, we let that hold the reins of our expression so that it is Love and Love only that finds expression. The Truth of that Love brings dominion in my own life experience and in my home, so that Love can live in my home.

When we come to center and allow the control factors that are natural for us as a human being to be operative in and through us and then in our world, Love rains down, Truth rains down through us. It pours through us and floods our world with that reality so that the design and the pattern of what’s forming around us can form around that reality.

I’ve come to see that, whatever happens in this world, what is essential is that there should be this reign that I’ve spoken of, the reign of the king or queen through a person and through all people. Through whatever extremism we have, whatever tumult, whatever chaos, what matters is that at the center of it all is the reign of heaven and the rain coming down—someone who allows themselves to be reined in by the spirit within them. It is the knowing of this, shared amongst a growing awakening body of people, that matters on the earth today. Whatever else happens, let the place where I am, let my home, be a home for the One I Am. And let it be so with integrity and reality, a dream but not just a dream—a manifest dream, a manifest home of the dream that’s within me and within all people. Let this home where I am be that home.

I trust you share this prayer wherever you are around the world. Let us embrace the reality of it together.