Republished with permission from D. Earl Stephens

Sleep comes very hard me these days.

I figured this would be the case as we close in on the most consequential event in my 64 years of bashing around our spinning home located somewhere in the vast unknown.

I am hanging on tight as we zoom toward an unavoidable collision with November 5th. My damn mind just won’t quiet itself.

So much is at stake.

Last night I slept deeply for the first time in weeks, and ventured far into those miraculous places where the brain has hidden magic thoughts that often rhyme with the feelings we lug around with us while we are all too upright, and staring hard at what is front of us during our waking hours.

If we’re lucky, the metaphor for the magic buried deep inside these dreams will easily be deciphered.

Last night, while my eyes were closed tight, I found myself in a company of soldiers, who had volunteered for a mission fraught with danger, but one that simply had to come off or the consequences would be dire.

Our chances of coming back were slim, but winning or losing oddly enough was not the point. The point was simply the journey, and the answer to a question: “Were we brave enough to go into the unknown, and have the courage to deal with whatever awaited us …”

I was outfitted with some huge crazy weapon of war I had never seen or used before as this band of brothers and sisters hovered above the ground and into enemy territory. I was surprised and proud of how calm I was as we headed into this terrifying place.

We were looking for a secret hatch, and when we found it, we were to open it up, climb through, and engage whatever it was that was awaiting us on the other side.

When we finally found the hatch, we slowly began to open it. The tension was palpable. And then …

I awoke with a start.

As I lay in bed, coming back to life, and slowly processing my deep journey into the complete unknown, I decided that maybe the point of the trip was to give me courage, and remind me that putting myself in uncomfortable places during these final days of this endless campaign for truth and justice, and truly testing myself, is its own reward.

We do all we can, my friends, because in the end, it’s all we can do …

I will canvass later today, and busy myself at my keyboard, on the phone, and at various rallies through the week.

It will have to be enough.

All this drama followed a phone call with my brother Friday night, that will never be forgotten.

We were catching up on things, which is to say, we were doing nothing but talking about the election. About 15 minutes into the conservation, my brother went to a place where I simply won’t travel.

“What if she loses …,” he said.

Well, I don’t go there—and didn’t in 2020, either—because I am simply not made for that. The blast in 2016 rocked me so completely, I have been unsteady since. I am more resolute and serious these days, sure, but now I know what my country is truly capable of, and to be too damn sure about anything is asking for trouble.

I was sure Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.

I spend my time traveling toward better things these days, and keep my eyes on the road, and firmly on the destination. There are just too many terrible distractions off to the side, and not enough time to be wasted considering them.

So when I told Chris that I never go to those places, he said fair enough, and asked what I thought was going to happen on November 5th.

I took a breath and gathered my thoughts. To tell you the truth, the answer to that question has changed by the hour since this remarkable woman, Kamala Harris, became our nominee three short months ago.

I was standing on the deck of our house here in Madison, Wisconsin, where patriots, thousands and thousands of us, have dug into this battleground state and fought on the frontlines of scores of election skirmishes since that dreadful November night almost eight years ago now.

And we have been winning.

We have won presidential races and governor races. We have won Senate races and we have won state supreme court races. We have righted wrongs, and now we are being asked to do so again …

So I said this to my brother:

“I have wondered how Americans would act with our backs against the wall and everything at stake. Would enough of us rise up and do whatever was necessary to stave off evil, and save our country? I think we are going to win big on November 5th, brother, simply because we have to.”

At the moment those words came out of my mouth I was looking into the cool, dark, October western sky, when my eyes went to a flash of light. At first I thought it was a plane, until I saw the ball of fire.

A shooting star was streaking through the sky.

I almost dropped my phone before telling my bother what had just happened as I said those words that seemed to flow through me as if a gift from those places in the mind that know things for sure if only we can open the hatch to discover them.

He said, “I think this phone call’s over, brother.”

“Me too,” I said.