Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted, "I measure my dreams with the calipers of reason." Indeed, progress, as much as military victory, is about calculation. The rule that guides the calculation, however, is the caliper; for there needs to be a stable starting point from which to move and measure results.

Whether secular or religious progress, history and geography are the fixed points of the caliper rule. The fact that there is both a history and a geography associated with divine revelation, no more limited than for human reason, is foundational of our dreams for the future of the world.

Reason dreams that the sky, or outer space, is the limit, but revelation looks inward for what is beyond comprehension. The astronomer knows that science offers a view of the vast universe. The believer knows that religion offers a view of the world without end.

Yet, nowadays, the astronaut that never ventures out of the spaceship is left feeling deprived of the full experience of space. To not venture outside  your religious cubicle is equally unfulfilling of the experience of the divine.

Still, when you calculate it with the calipers of revelation, it is a longer, but surer, measure of dreams coming true. For a blast into space has one surrounded by a void; whereas an unanchored step into that same space has one surrounded by what no human can avoid.