I think that was a white fragility dream. Weird. I occasionally dream dreams where I am more of an observer than a character, like watching a movie. This was one of those.
The character in this dream was a man driving a car. In my dream-mind, I called him The White Man. He was trying to get to a place where he could get rid of the body in the back of his car. It was important to note, in the dream, that he was “innocent.” He believed he was not responsible for the death of the body, but there it was in the trunk of his car, and he had to deal with it. He knew that if anyone saw the body, or if he was stopped by police, he would be culpable, even though he had nothing to do with the body being in his car.
That was important in the dream–The White Man was totally innocent, himself. He just needed to get rid of this body in his trunk before he was caught with it, because he would not be held guiltless if caught. (sounds familiar, right? “But my ancestors didn’t own slaves!” “But I believe that everyone is equal!” “But. . .”)
I am working on doing my inner work, trying to be open and transparent with myself and others about my biases and unaddressed prejudices. My psyche had to throw up a movie-style story to get me to notice that I must be trying to hide my own biases, my own vulnerabilities, while I am trying to fix myself and my problem. I’m insisting on my own innocence, even while I am driving around with a body in the trunk of my car.
There was one significant clue in the dream, a clue that insisted that The White Man is me: He wore a little bag around his neck with his wallet and keys in it, just like I wear when my clothes don’t have pockets.
Time to work more seriously on vulnerability, on not hiding my ugly truths, on accepting that there really is no such thing as the innocence I insist upon as long as I am hiding a body in the trunk.
Gratitudes:
1. Rest
2. Work
3. Exercise
4. Cool water and nourishing food
5. Dreams that keep me unsettled enough to keep moving
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“To be brave is to behave bravely
when your heart is faint.
So you can be really brave
only when you really ain’t.”
—Piet Hein
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair
“You can never go down the drain.” —Mr. Rogers
“Good People,
most royal greening verdancy,
rooted in the sun,
you shine with radiant light.” ―Hildegard of Bingen
“Just living is not enough said the butterfly, one needs sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” ―Hans Christian Anderson
“I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquillity comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
―Dalai Lama
“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”
― Vandana Shiva
“You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.”
―Leymah Gbowee
“I remember Hushpuppy at the end of Beasts of the Southern Wild, just trying to take some food home to her daddy Wink, finally turning to face the hideous beast on the bridge, facing it down and saying, “I take care of my own.”
“I take care of my own. You are my own, and I am yours—I think this is what God is saying, or trying to, over the din. We are each other’s. There are many forms of thirst, many kinds of water.”
―Anne Lamott
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” —Virginia Woolf
Mockingbird Chronicles 