There was once a well carved deep into the earth, lined with stone, ringed with moss, patient as centuries.
Yet this well had no water.
It was hollow, dry, waiting. And in the long nights when moonlight spilled down its dark throat, it began to dream. The well dreamed of rain—of silver drops cascading from the sky, of thunder announcing their approach, of the sweet ache of being filled to its brim.
It did not dream because it was broken.
It dreamed because it was whole.
A vessel knows, even when empty, what it was shaped to hold.
We speak often of fullness as blessing and emptiness as curse. Yet perhaps the deeper truth is that both belong. A well that has never been empty does not understand rain. A heart that has never known thirst cannot truly taste sweetness.
The dreaming well shows us that emptiness is not absence—it is resonance. A call across the veil. A hollow that teaches the shape of what longs to come.
Rain remembers the well, and the well remembers the rain.
There are seasons when we, too, live as that dreaming well.
We hunger for communion, but the heavens feel closed.
We ache for purpose, but the pattern hides behind mist.
We thirst for love, for beauty, for belonging—yet what we receive is silence.
And in those moments, we are tempted to believe we are abandoned.
We are tempted to name the emptiness as failure.
But the dreaming well whispers another truth:
Thirst is not proof of abandonment.
Longing is not proof of lack.
The ache itself is a sign that we are tuned to something real, even if unseen.
The old stories tell us the gods travel in disguises. Hermes hides behind a stranger’s grin, Brigid waits in the flame we almost extinguished, Hekate lingers at the fork of the road when we are too weary to choose.
So too the rain comes in disguises. Not always in torrents and downpours. Sometimes it falls as tears, as laughter, as the slow seep of trust through stone. Sometimes it does not fill the well all at once. Sometimes it traces the edges of our hollow first, reminding us of the shape of what we carry.
The dream and the drop belong to one another.
Here lies a pattern that threads through all things:
- The wound remembers the healing it longs for.
- The gift carries the ache of being given.
- The vessel is made by its hollow as much as by its stone.
To live is to be carved, to carry both form and emptiness.
To dream is to listen for what moves just beyond the Veil.
And what is the Veil but the silence between two bells?
One sound has ended, the next has not yet begun—yet still the air vibrates, still the heart listens, still the soul remembers.
The Veil is not a wall. It is a pause. A place where longing teaches us to lean into resonance.
Perhaps you, too, have been such a well—hollow, dry, whispering your ache into the night.
Perhaps you have wondered if your longing would ever be answered.
If so, remember:
The dream of rain is itself a form of communion.
Your emptiness is not your enemy.
Your thirst is not betrayal—it is invitation.
A well does not cease to be a well when dry.
It remains what it is: ready, waiting, faithful.
And when the rain comes—and it will—the hollow is already prepared to receive.
Sit with me here, then, beside the stone mouth of this well.
Listen to the silence that is not silence.
Feel the echo of water not yet fallen, the weight of clouds not yet broken.
What do you dream of when you are empty?
What rain does your soul remember?
