Dreams Turning into Reality: How I Became Friends With My Icon

It was in 1980 when I first heard Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn. I hadn’t heard of him before, being pretty sheltered in the Christian culture I was cocooned in. A friend gave me his album “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws”, after Lisa and I were first married.

I had this immediate sense that we were soulmates. I felt we were very much on the same page, and I wondered if maybe one day we would be friends.

Impossible! Right? Him a Canadian icon and then little ol’ me.

Fast forward 40 years, at the beginning of COVID, and I get a suspicious email from a woman claiming to be a follower of mine who was positively affected by my book, Questions Are the Answer, but also claiming to be Bruce Cockburn’s wife.

“Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

My first thought was that a friend was playing a prank on me, so I asked her for some kind of verification. After a few back and forths, I realized this was the real deal, and we ended up FaceTiming… her and Bruce and Lisa and I, and we became friends.

Fast forward a few more years, and here I am hanging out with Bruce Cockburn while on his tour in my neck of the woods promoting his new beautiful album, “Oh Sun Oh Moon”. We talked for hours about our unique but also similar paths. Especially spiritually.

(Here's my wife Lisa, Bruce Cockburn, and me.)

What’s most strange about this is that I really didn’t orchestrate any part of this directly. It was his wife… whom I did not know… who followed me… that reached out to me cold turkey.

Not to sound woo-woo… But this has happened to me more than a few times where dreams have come true. I’m also learning a lot about making things happen that I thought were impossible.

Such as, for example, making a living as an artist and helping people around the world on their spiritual journeys.

Unbelievable a few years ago. Doing it now.

I’m coming to the conclusion that there is a mixture of making magic happen and being open to it happening. I don’t mean supernatural magic. I mean the magic of our dreams.

Can we turn our dreams into reality?
Can we work to make our dreams come true?

Yes, we may. But it takes both.

Even writing this blog and sending my weekly newsletter to you and 13 000 more people is a dream come true. Does anyone here know what I’m talking about?