In the middle of the night I woke up just as someone was giving me a message. It was like I was a student in a classroom, and the teacher was writing these things on the board:
Living By Their Rules: 1. You will only succeed if you push down the others around you. 2. There is not enough for everyone.
I’m sort of glad I woke up at that point. I don’t think I want to see that play out. Don’t want to try to fit in to that system.
More dreams about forgetting my mask and being among others who simply don’t care. Trying to pull my shirt collar up above my nose to protect myself and others.
Also, I heard a bird call, loudly, while I was in a large room, like a mall (I think the sound was the real world entering my dream), and saw, instead of the singer, two tiny green hummingbirds, no larger than bumble bees, circling around each other by a red wall in an elaborate aerial dance.
Gratitudes: 1. Tabula Rasa 2. My wonderful mother, who was born 80 years ago today. 3. Squirrels, how they stand with their hands on their hearts. I love the white spots behind their ears, the pensive look on their faces when they are looking up at the feeders–and yes, they’re a pain at the feeders, but they belong here, too. 4. Color and texture. I’m an eccentric in my sartorial choices because I like to mix colors and prints and textures. Might look funny, but it makes me oddly happy. 5. How small acts can be rituals, like mending torn clothing focuses the mind on Mending.
May we walk this year in Beauty!
Honoring Kwanzaa with those who celebrate it: The word for this last day of Kwanzaa is Imani, or Faith. Believe that your dreams have the power to create change in the world. May it be so for you and for me and for all who long for and work for justice in the coming year.
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Courage, Dear Heart.” —the Albatross (Aslan) to Lucy, C. S. Lewis
“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘it will be happier.’” —Alfred Tennyson
“Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.” ―Joan Chittister
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” —T. S. Eliot
“And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.” —William Blake
“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” ―Mary Oliver
I know I did a lot of intense dreamwork last night, but the images and ideas are fleeting once again. I think I need to wake up and get writing before The Talker wakes up and starts his lengthy discourses on video games.
I’ve been meditating more on the gnomon, the sundial’s indicator. The perceiver. The indicator. Standing in its singular spot, the gnomon casts a shadow that shows the seeker where she is in the map of time. The gnomon must have a shadow in order to guide others to the truth of the moment. How can I be a truly helpful truth-telling guide if I do not know my shadow? If I do not stand boldly in the light of the sun, knowing that my shadow will flow out behind me for all to see? Perhaps this is the next step toward maturity.
Gratitudes: 1. Mending: I have a couple pairs of leggings that are developing some serious ladders, so yesterday I tried a woven mend that I saw on bookhou‘s Instagram videos last week. Mine ended up a little messy, but I definitely see the possibilities, and I have lots more holes to practice and improve on. 2. Last night I received a really moving message from a former student, talking about how, when I made the write poetry in Creative Writing class, he thought it was stupid, but when he had intense healing work to do after a painful time, he discovered that poetry was what he needed to be able to express what had happened to him. My heart hurts for the pain he must walk through, and it sings for the delight that something my work offered would be helpful in his healing. 3. For several months, I have been grieving the loss of a necklace I made. It has a bead and a pendant friends of mine brought me from East Africa, a large quartz crystal given to me by another friend, a cube of limonite Jon found on the farm, and a large garnet I bought at Radiance. Normally I am pretty philosophical about losing things, but this necklace was so attached to my web of beloveds and grounding places that it was a grief to lose it. Yesterday as I was re-arranging one of my altar spaces, I found the necklace, tucked in a corner where I had put it in a place of honor. It feels so good to wear it again. 4. How chakra meditations help to center me in my body. When I study religions and philosophical frameworks, ideas that separate the essential human from the body, that seek to raise the spirit/soul/essence out of matter in order to meet God or reach enlightenment, have always seemed incredibly suspicious and upside-down to me. My strongest sense has always been that the pathway to truth and knowing–gnowing–is by going deep, by centering myself within the body. Matter–matrix-mater matters. While I reject western materialism that clings to things as a superficial source of happiness, I think my pathway is material, enmattering. 5. How our Shadows can become our Guides. I am ready, I think, to take up this work. Having explored my shadows and begun to develop a sense of their shape and depth, I stand in the light and watch to see where they point.
May we walk in Beauty!
Honoring Kwanzaa with those who celebrate it: Today’s Principle in the Kwanzaa celebration is Kuumba: Creativity.
“I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.” —Michelle Obama, Becoming
“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.” —Diane Ackerman
A string of beads has a thread running through all the beads, keeping them together. What we need is a thread too—of sanity and stability. Because when you have a thread, even though each bead is separate, they hang together.” —Sogyal Rinpoche
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” (From the Talmud)
“The earth has music for those who listen.” —George Santayana
“By our love and our need for love we become for one another midwives of the true self.” —James Finley
“Civility will not overturn the patriarchy.” —Mona Eltahawy
“The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice.” —Bryan Stevenson
“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” ―David Bowie
“In a political culture of managed spectacles and passive spectators, poetry appears as a rift, a peculiar lapse, in the prevailing mode. The reading of a poem, a poetry reading, is not a spectacle, nor can it be passively received. It’s an exchange of electrical currents through language.” ―Adrienne Rich, 1993
“A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you… where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.” ―Adrienne Rich
“More firebrand women. More dragon spirited women. More loud women. More angry women. More hard women. More intimidating women. More history-making women. More rebel women. More rebel women. More rebel women.” ―Nikita Gill
I needed sleep long and deep last night, so the dream-realm was quiet, at least as far as dream (re)collection goes. There is a book, by an author whose name is Ratzia (or Rascia) Hescht. My sleep-drenched brain felt that was important to remember. Perhaps that ought to be my pen name. This morning, there is a bright red cardinal in the beige world outside, a singular pop of brilliance, like a single name drawn from the mists of dream.
Gratitudes: 1. Deep sleep and feeling rested 2. The potential of an open day ahead 3. Learning–again and again–to listen to my body 4. Mystery and magic and webs of connection 5. The inward path
May we walk in Beauty!
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. #goodtrouble” —John Lewis tweet
Honoring Kwanzaa with those who celebrate it: Today’s word is Nia, Purpose. This refers to the purpose of building African culture through community endeavor. As a white person, this is another reminder to me to take a learning and listening posture, and to use the privilege culturally stamped on my skin to give space and voice to others.
“Being curious is the most important part of being a journalist. It might be the most important part of being anything.” —Lemony Snicket
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” —Virginia Woolf
“And when I had asked the name of the river from the brakeman, and heard that it was called the Susquehanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be part and parcel of the beauty of the land. That was the name, as no other could be, for that shining river and desirable valley.” —Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879
The New Song by W. S. Merwin For some time I thought there was time and that there would always be time for what I had a mind to do and what I could imagine going back to and finding it as I had found it the first time but by this time I do not know what I thought when I thought back then there is no time yet it grows less there is the sound of rain at night arriving unknown in the leaves once without before or after then I hear the thrush waking at daybreak singing the new song
“We need wilderness and extravagance. Whatever shuts a human being away from the waterfall and the tiger will kill [her].” —Robert Bly
“Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us…” ―Rai Aren
Someone asked me what is your religion? I said, “All the paths that lead to the light.” —Anonymous
Three parts to last night’s sleepless-disturbed dreams: I think the cats were doing Goblin Parties in the night, because in the dream I am watching a family of lynxes in the field across the road. It’s sunny and snowy and they’re walking through the corn stubble. Two are either fighting or mating or playing, because they’re yowling and tussling (cue the cats). The interesting thing about the lynxes is that they’re tiger-lynxes. They’re shaped and sized like lynxes, but striped like tigers, with black and white fur, and a ridge of rusty orange along their backs. Later, they’re in the house, and I can get them to come out of hiding by banging on pots and pans.
Then Jon and I are finding our way into a park somewhere, up on the top of a hill, through the woods, sort of like the drive in to Rocky Ridge Park if we were coming from the other direction. There’s a camp at the top, beautiful old buildings, sunset over a lake where a meditating woman is doing yoga in the water, even though it’s winter. We park by the lodge and go in to see if our reserved room is ready. The man who is in charge of the rooms, cleaning and renting, seems to have forgotten that we were coming, or was hoping we wouldn’t. He starts slamming around the halls and rooms, swearing under his breath. Another guest sits with us in the hall as we wait, chuckling at the angry cleaning guy. I am pretty sure that I have been in different versions of this camp in dreams before.
Then I am in one of the high-rise hotels that I often visit in dreams. This time I am there as a teacher, or for a teachers’ conference or something. I go to visit one of the older and very experienced teachers. He tells me the logo on one of his school flags, which he finds very humorous: “Please Pick Up the Machinations.” (I think I have that correct. It may have been Don’t rather than Please.) He thought it very witty. I head back to my office room in the hotel, which is open to the hall (more of a cubby than a room, actually), and one of my friends is there (not someone I recognize as a being I know in waking life, but someone I am very attached to in the dream). He says he is there to eat with me, and I am really touched that he realized I was feeling lonely and confused. I offer him the lemonade packets that were left in my office space by the hotel folks–he doesn’t want any coffee.
All of this wandering through spaces semi-familiar, places that exist on the margins of reality, where I return, again and again, in dreamings. I know I am feeling confused about finding my way through some really important places in my waking life, and it makes sense that I would see it here in dreamland. In the last two sequences, one person was angry that I had appeared, and a second was helpfully offering me advice, and a third was quietly willing to be present to me in my confusion. If this is indeed about my confusion regarding how/whether to publish, and what to work on first, and how to go about it, perhaps I need to seek out a friend who is willing to listen and be present, and a publishing mentor or life coach (I’ll take lemonade and witty jokes). I feel like the mentor has given me a message to pay attention to. Unfortunately, unless I can remember whether he said Don’t or Please, and until I can decipher what the heck it means, I don’t know if I can make much use of it.
Oddly, I have dreamed of lynxes before, and it was also during Twelvenight. Lynxes are secretive and elusive, watchers. Lynxes see things others miss. Tigers are about courage and will and sensuality.
Gratitudes: 1. Walking around the property yesterday, I caught a strong whiff of Fox. I learned years ago to distinguish the scent, and I often catch it for a brief moment in wild places. I always second guess myself, but yesterday I walked back up hill for thirty paces or so, and walked back down, and caught it again. Fox is one of the guiding archetypes in the wisdom cards I received for Christmas, and just that morning I had been meditating on a card of a little fox family. 2. The gleaming surfaces of freshly-scrubbed copper-bottomed pots. I like the way they seem to take on an extra shine in the twenty seconds after you finish scrubbing. 3. Lattes. These mornings, I have been making coconut or almond milk lattes with coconut oil and vanilla and honey. A lovely way to start the morning. 4. Synchronicity. I have been contemplating the word gnosis (deep, more intuitive spiritual understanding of the world), and this morning on a FB thread, where my friend Hussein (a first-language Arabic speaker) and I were discussing the role of breathing in poetry and speech and communication, he mentioned his love of fiqh, the study of deep meanings. 5. Continuing in Time Out of Time. Oh, I’ll do work this week, too, but it’s a gift to be in this space of restfulness and contemplation.
May we walk in search of deep understanding.
Honoring Kwanzaa with those who celebrate it: Today’s Word is one of my favorite Swahili words: Ujamaa. Cooperative economics. How can we create local systems that develop economic justice for all? How can we share our finances in ways that build up the community?
“Don’t let the tamed ones tell you how to live.” —Jonny Ox
“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they’ll know it is possible.” —Gloria Steinem
Mark Twain: “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
Frederick Buechner: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
“A night finally came when I woke up sweaty and angry and afraid I’d never go back to sleep again. All those stories were rising up in my throat. Voices were echoing in my neck, laughter behind my ears, and I was terribly, terribly afraid that I was finally as crazy as my kind was supposed to be. But the desire to live was desperate in my belly, and the stories I had hidden all those years were the blood and bone of it. To get it down, to tell it again, to make something—by God, just once to be real in the world, without lies or evasions or sweet-talking nonsense. It was a rough beginning—my own shout of life against death, of shape and substance against silence and confusion. It was most of all my deepest, abiding desire to live fleshed and strengthened on the page, a way to tell the truth as a kind of magic not cheapened or distorted by a need to please any damn body at all. Without it, I cannot imagine my own life. Without it, I have no way to tell you who I am.” —Dorothy Allison, from “Deciding to Live”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: “Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”
“A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15
One of the ways I try to remember my dreams is, when I wake up in the night after a dream, I note the main points in my head before I fall back to sleep, and then in the morning, I gran those little phrases, like pieces of paper swirling in a wind, and try to tack them down in writing first thing in the morning. There were several of these last night, but the clearest, most compelling dream was right as I was waking up.
I am at some sort of church service/picnic (I do not recognize the people there from waking life). I know that at 3:30, as things are winding down, I am to meet with one of the women about some sort of planning, but I forget, and by the time my child is getting antsy and begging me to go, it’s 3:58. Another woman approaches me. Apparently, she had written me an email (and I hadn’t seen it) that she wanted to meet with me at 4:00 to talk about her child.
We sit down to talk. She pulls out papers, color photocopies of photographs and notes she’s been taking. Her teen child is coming out as trans, and she wants to talk to me about it. She is open and accepting of the child, at least on the surface, but she is agitated. She worries about what her conservative Mennonite family will think. She worries about how the relatives in Argentina will respond. She keeps tearing the papers. At one point she gets up to go ask someone else a question, and I gather up the pieces of paper, wondering how they could be so shredded–I hadn’t seen her tearing these.
This one seems–perhaps deceptively–straightforward. I teach at a private Christian school. I have very intentionally made it part of my role to be ready to listen to parents of LGBTQ+ kids, to hear their questions and worries, to try to walk them through their own anxieties and stereotypes, to help them find their way to expressing their deep unconditional love for their children in the midst of their own confusion. Perhaps the dream points to deeper agitation, maybe for myself as well as the parents. The torn pieces of paper stand out to me, as well as the frustration of not being able to finish a sentence, not being able to help the mom relax enough to settle into an understandable narrative.
There’s also my own anxiety about keeping appointments. I missed the one I had planned, and almost missed this one because I hadn’t checked my email. Ugh. I hate the way meetings and appointments disrupt the flow of a day. That’s been one of the side blessings of this pandemic time–fewer meetings.
Honoring collective work and community responsibility, ujima, with my friends who are celebrating Kwanzaa. I love that ujima comes after kujichagulia, self-determination. When we each get our own house in order, our own mojo going, then we can work together to build and strengthen our communities. Here in these days of stillness as the earth is poised to swirl back into the Long Day, what a wonderful idea to contemplate: How can I carry my own energies into community-building in the New Year? And of course, Kwanzaa is an African American holiday, so the question for me becomes: How can I use the privilege I was born with to support and strengthen the community-building work of BIPOC?
“I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” ―Anaïs Nin
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. It seems that we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit, we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder precisely because it is so ordinary.” ―Richard Rohr
“Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.” ―Desmond Tutu
“We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.” —Wendell Berry
I’ve decided to make a physical Dream Bundle, to collect my words and symbols in the next week and a half. I have known that the physical act of designing and creating, of touching and gathering, is part of what makes a ritual real, but it has taken me years of this annual inner process to realize that a physical element would guide the work.
Last night’s dreams: Much of the dream takes place on a front porch, children coming home from school. I’m watching for two in particular–not sure why. There’s something vulnerable about these two. I miss connecting with them one day, and my brother says to be sure to engage the one in particular on the coming day, because he needs to find out how to help the young man.
One of our relatives brings in the deer he has shot, a buck. My niece is delighted to go with him and help him to gut and skin it. She knows she can do this, even though she has never done it before, because she is a nurse skilled in anatomy. Although the rest of the dream is sunny and warm, this Hunter comes to us through snow, the Stag over his shoulders. He is clad in grey and green, with a Robin Hood-style wool hat.
It’s pretty convoluted and wispy this morning, though pieces have been coming back as I write, particularly the image of Hunter and Stag. I do get this: focused, intentional helping. Working together to identify and meet needs. Using our own skills to solve problems.
Also, there’s the Stag and Hunter. In folklore and myth, the Stag is killed for the health and well-being of the community. The Hunter, in this case, is a quiet and sensitive young man with an eye for Beauty. I am fascinated by how this felt like an incidental part of the dream, but as I wrote other pieces, the dream memory of the image has strengthened and coalesced, as if to say, “This one: This is the important piece that ties it all together.”
Gratitude: Light and shadow. Voices from the past and voices bringing the future. Dreams and messages. How the light enters.
May we walk humbly, in justice, mercy, and Beauty!
“There is more to life than we previously imagined. Angels hide in every nook and cranny, magi masquerade as everyday people, and shepherds wear the garments of day laborers. The whole earth is brimming with glory for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.” –Howard Thurman
Marking Kwanzaa with my friends who celebrate. Today’s word is Kujichagulia. Self determination. (Even if you don’t know Swahili, it’s a fun word to roll around in your mouth. Try it. Emphasize the second and second to last syllables.)
The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.” —Madeleine L’Engle
“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” ―Carrie Fisher
“The stories I cared about, the stories I read and reread, were usually stories which dared to disturb the universe, which asked questions rather than gave answers. I turned to story, then, as now, looking for truth, for it is in story that we find glimpses of meaning, rather than in textbooks. . . . Fortunately, nobody ever told me that stories were untrue, or should be outgrown, and then as now they nourished me and kept me willing to ask the unanswerable questions.” —Madeleine L’Engle
“We need to dare disturb the universe by not being manipulated or frightened by judgmental groups who assume the right to insist that if we do not agree with them, not only do we not understand but we are wrong. How dull the world would be if we all had to feel the same way about everything, if we all had to like the same books, dislike the same books.” —Madeleine L’Engle
“But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.” —Madeleine L’Engle
“So let us look for beauty and grace, for love and friendship, for that which is creative and birth-giving and soul-stretching. Let us dare to laugh at ourselves, healthy, affirmative laughter. Only when we take ourselves lightly can we take ourselves seriously, so that we are given the courage to say, ‘Yes! I dare disturb the universe.’” —Madeleine L’Engle
(In these days between Solstice and Epiphany, between Christmas and Three Kings’ Day, I mine my dreams and experiences for images and words that I will use to fashion into the word or phrase or idea that I will carry as my guiding concept into the New Year. I call this process “making my dream bundle.” So far, it’s only words on a page, but perhaps today, I will write the words and find symbols so I can carry it around with me for now.)
As I wait and watch for the words and images that I want to carry into the coming year, I have stumbled back into a word cluster that has always fascinated me. Gnosis, a word rooted in ancient languages, means knowledge–particularly spiritual and mystical understanding. Deep awareness. Stand a pillar next to that, a gnomon, and you can tell the time, a gnomon being the part of the sundial that casts the shadow, or any pillar or column that allows you to interpret the time by the shadow it casts. The gnomon is the indicator, the perceiver.
Now add another of my favorite words: gnome, a word coined by the philosopher/physician/alchemist Parcelsus in the early 1500s, meaning “earth-dweller,” to refer to the archetypal being of earth. Whimsical, perhaps, and also powerful, as archetypes so often are. It also has a homophonal cognate relationship to gnosis, and some writers assume that Paracelsus saw the earth-dwellers as keepers of deep knowledge as well.
I’ll tuck Gnowledge and Gnosis, Gnomon and Gnome, into my dream bundle, along with the heightened dream images, the bald eagle that sat in the tree outside my window, the stump that wears a ruffly skirt of oyster mushrooms, even in the frigid days of winter. Mycelium, the secret network, the fungal source of the mushrooms that are simply the above-ground visible flowers of the mycelial web. Web, network–put them into the dream bundle.
Maybe I’ll slip gnu in there, too, just for whimsy’s sake.
I should have known that the book I am reading with my Themes in Lit class (The Zookeeper’s Wife) would invade my dreams. In last night’s dream, I am running from the Gestapo, trying desperately to keep hidden. A friend hides me in her massive house. I hide in the attic. I hide in tiny rooms. Finally, as they’re closing in, I slip into the pool, and hide beneath a raft. The Gestapo give up and go away.
As I was running from room to room, listening for their footsteps, and finding claustrophobic little hiding places, I kept thinking about how I was endangering the lives of all of the people in the house, knowing that if I were to be caught, everyone in the house would be shot on the spot.
Because it’s such a direct correlation to my reading, I wonder if it belongs in the dream bundle, but it’s really become part of my inner life in the past month, this story of people who chose the dangerous path of saving people’s lives at the risk of their own. Thousands of Poles in WWII risked their lives to create a vast network that created false documents, hid Jewish people and resistance fighters, and sent them to safe places in the countryside or out of the country. I think this belongs in the dream bundle. I already put Network into the mix. I’ll add resistance, and risk, and doing good because it is the thing to do.
Gratitude: 1. My brain and heart are beginning to settle. Yesterday’s quiet and rest, almost-boredom, was a necessary grounding. I received a set of wisdom cards yesterday that I am exploring. The archetypes are rich and meaningful , and a helpful tool for meditation. Settling. 2. This cat Sachs, who is lying next to me with his front paws on my right arm, purring, purring, and occasionally singing to the birds who come to the suet block on the balcony. Makes it hard to type, but he’s good companionship. 3. Chocolate. And flaming figgy pudding. And grapefruit. 4. Zoom. It’s not a hug, nor is it the long, slow, hanging out with beloveds. But it will do in a pinch. 5. Sunshine and snow.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with Beauty!
Joyful Kwanzaa to my friends who are celebrating the first fruits: Today is Umoja, or Unity. With you, I will reflect on ways in which we can bring unity in divided situations in the coming year.
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” —Mary Oliver
“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” ―Susan Sontag
“People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.” —Wendell Berry
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” —Mary Oliver
“When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying.” —Robert A. F. Thurman
“It’s quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people’s dreams.” ―Gayle Forman
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh “There is still a window of time. Nature can win If we give her a chance.” —Dr. Jane Goodall
“By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“I am as conscious as anyone of the gravity of the present situation for [hu]mankind. . . . And yet some instinct, developed in contact with life’s long past, tells me that salvation for us lies in the direction of the very danger the so terrifies us. . . . We are like travelers caught up in a current, trying to make our way back: an impossible and a fatal course. Salvation for us lies ahead, beyond the rapids. We must not turn back—we need a strong hand on the tiller, and a good compass.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
So many random dream images from last night. They’re fragmented, but they all seem connected somehow.
Josiah and I buy sandwiches in some sort of sunny outdoor courtyard. People are setting up for some sort of event, so we put together a couple of chairs and sit down. One of the custodians from school makes a chair for himself and eats with us.
Jon and I are in a classroom. I think we’re back in elementary school. We’re ahead of the class, so we get to sit near the back and read the next material on our own. The class is finished with the work, but the teacher can’t find the test. I have little plastic animals set up all around my desk and on the windowsill behind me. I’m a little claustrophobic in the space, worried I’ll send my little animals tumbling if I move.
I’m in a Victorian sort of house with two other young women. It’s the next class (after the one in the previous paragraph), and we’re reading a Shakespeare play together. The one woman gets bored and wanders off. I am helping the other to read the parts. It sounds more like Jane Austen than Shakespeare. The other woman tires out, but we’ve been reading for half an hour, so we quit.
I am frantically calling people and trying to find out where my baby is. Someone took him and said they’d bring him right back, but I can’t get in touch with anyone.
I’m on a sort of courtroom, and the proceedings have been going on for hours. I’m bored. Suddenly I notice that the one lawyer is terribly sick. His eyes are red and puffy and he’s sneezing. No one else seems to notice, but I am frantic about finding my mask and putting it on. I move to a corner of the room near a window.
I find a telephone and try to remember how to dial my parents’ number to tell them about the missing baby. This never goes well in dreams, but this time when I pick up the old-fashioned receiver, my mother is right there, on the other end of the line! I think that perhaps everything is going to be okay.
I decide to rid my bike through the countryside to get home to my parents. This is common in dreams for me. I get to a place that is familiar to my dream-self, except that the corn has grown up on all the corners. Someone has placed blankets on the corn all around, as if they needed somewhere to hang a thousand blankets to dry. The road to the right should be the right way to go, but it seems to curve up ahead in a way that it isn’t supposed to. I ride several yards up toward the curve, but it actually turns back upon itself in a loop and ends up heading back the way I have come. Someone has planted their corn across the road! Just as I decide to ride back the way I have come, I wake up.
The odd thing in the waking up was that I thought I was hearing people speaking, so faintly it could have been my imagination (which it probably was). I thought maybe one of the kids was up really early, listening to a video somewhere in the house. But there’s no sign of anyone. Maybe it was the heat coming on that sounded in my dreambrain like people talking.
This set has a lot of little anxieties: the lost child, the inability to get to my parents, the unprepared teacher, the claustrophobia, the coronavirus, the confusing pathway home. So many of these are my dream-tropes for lostness and confusion. In each one, I am just going along, trying to muddle through each scene the best I can, which is what Jon and I are doing here, trying to make the best of this strange year. This will be a lovely introverts’ holiday, all of us together here, but we also need our people, and we can’t quite see how the road ahead will lead us to them. It seems to be recursive, bending back upon itself.
If there’s a message here, it’s to tend to my anxieties, to notice how the worry affects my choices.
Gratitude: 1. The messages of dreams 2. Quiet holidays 3. Loving hearts, even at a distance 4. There will be an end to this 5. All the people who are working to keep us safe, and to bring an end to this.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
Someday soon, we all will be together, if the Fates allow. . .”
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. . . .get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
“From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone. Let the king beware for your justice tears every tyrant from his throne. The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn; These are tables spread, ev’ry mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn. My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn. Wipe away all tears, For the dawn draws near, And the world is about to turn.” —Rory Cooney, from “Canticle of the Turning”
Making the House Ready for the Lord by Mary Oliver Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but still nothing is as shining as it should be for you. Under the sink, for example, is an uproar of mice–it is the season of their many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves and through the walls the squirrels have gnawed their ragged entrances–but it is the season when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow; what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox, the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know that really I am speaking to you whenever I say, as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.
“I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through listen to this music I am the concert from the mouth of every creature singing with the myriad chorus” —Hafiz (Ladinsky)
“May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.” ―Mary Oliver
“We’re all just walking each other home.” —Ram Dass
“I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel.” ―Mary Oliver
Last night’s sleep was deep and dreams were fleeting.
Gratitudes: 1. Deep sleep 2. Yesterday I saw a bald eagle, right here at the house 3. Baking 4. I’ll see my parents today, if fleetingly 5. All of you, candles and stars, lights twinkling in your own particular constellations, bringing the light.
May we walk in Beauty!
Christmas Eve Ponderings: “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” —Omar Khayyám
“In our heart and soul we are each like Mary, holding the possibility for a birth that can change the world.” —Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, Quote from A Prayer at the Winter Solstice (2012)
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. but let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune but do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. —Max Ehrmann 1927
These next couple weeks until Epiphany are going to include a lot of Dream-Work. I’m sifting through the messages and images and questions presented in my dreams during this Liminal time to formulate my word or phrase or token to carry with me for the coming year.
Last night’s dream: I am on a sort of retreat with friends at a house in a little mountain town. I sleep in a cramped little chair bed, although there are plenty of spacious and comfortable beds and couches and recliners all over the house, and my neck is stiff. The basement smells like a musty bathroom. I feel like my friends are accusing me of having created the stench, but I explain that it’s because of the old pipes in the basement bathroom.
My parents have decided to come pick me up. Even though it feels a little intrusive, I am excited to see them, and grateful that they’re coming. We decide to drive around the little town. I recognize it from previous dreams. It might even be the same town from the previous night’s dream that I was so sure was Lancaster.
When we get back to the house, some distant cousins are driving up to the house. I don’t recognize them from waking life, but in the dream, they’re a close connection from childhood. They’re conservative Mennonites. Only the father of the family is wearing a mask, and I suddenly realize that I am also unmasked. As I get out of the car, the mother rushes up to hug me, and I am frantically trying to pull my shirt up over my nose. She doesn’t notice or care, and wraps me in a giant hug, but I am pulling away and trying to cover my face. They’re in a hurry to get going, so they rush off. (This is the only point in my dream where masks seem to matter.)
While we’re getting ready to go into the house, the Evangelist drives up. He’s a famous evangelical Christian evangelist (not one I recognize from waking life). He’s attractive and charming. He’s wearing a fashionably rumpled brown wool suit. It’s like someone in the 1940s might wear–like a hip and dashing college boy, not a stuffy banker. He is charming and attractive and he knows it. And he knows we know it. It’s like a private joke between us. The press are snapping pictures and yelling questions. He’s posing and vamping for the camera, cracking jokes and being charming. His hair falls just so over his forehead. Then he gets sort of quiet and serious, and says that he has predicted the exact moment of the return of Jesus. Then he goes into the house, vamping and posing all the way.
We go inside to pack up my things. I have to remember to take the artwork that’s up on top of the wardrobe. It’s a six or seven foot high piece of lace, tacked onto a wooden frame. The pattern in the lace is of Jesus, and I have painted colors onto the lace to clarify the image.
Then I wake up.
My Dream-spinner seems to have been trying to organize some thoughts about Christians. I feel like she sent me tropes, like I already know this lesson, thanks. The loving and caring plain people of my childhood are ignoring mask mandates intended to keep people safe. The evangelical evangelisti are shallow and vampy and charming. Despite my disillusionment with so many of the forms of Christianity today, I have my own carefully and artfully crafted image of Jesus that I need to remember to take with me. I’ve started with the abstract images that others have created, and have filled in the lines and colors to create an image that makes sense to me. Some of my people may think my idea of Jesus is too fragile and insubstantial, and others will think it cheesy, like a painting of Elvis on velvet, but I am fond of it, and I keep it quietly in my own room.
I need to ponder how I am also the judgmental friends, the scofflaw Mennonites, the vampy Evangelist. After the first scenes at the house where I was at the retreat, the rest of the events of the dream seemed to happen to me and around me, and I took much more of an observer role.
What threads do I pull out to keep in my Dream Bundle? What messages rise to the surface? Jesus is a pretty strong thread. Community in many forms (with my friends, my family, the long-ago childhood connections, the town, the media). There’s the Charming but Shallow Evangelist (I think this is a message about my Leo energy).
“Stay close to those who sing, tell stories, and enjoy life, and whose eyes sparkle with happiness. Because happiness is contagious and will always manage to find a solution, whereas logic can find only an explanation for the mistake made.” —Paulo Coelho
“Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed —all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don’t leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies—it’s all one. It’s one energy.” —Ram Dass
“We’re all just walking each other home.” —Ram Dass (1931-2019)
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” —Ram Dass
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.” —Ram Dass
“Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” —Ram Dass
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.” —Ram Dass
“We’re fascinated by the words, but where we meet is in the silence behind them.” —Ram Dass
“Start from where you are—not where you wish you were. The work you’re doing becomes your path.” —Ram Dass
“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” ―Jonathan Gottschall
“We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.” —Wendell Berry
“Sincerity? I can fake that.” —Hawkeye Pierce
“There is a way of beholding nature that is in itself a form of prayer.” —Diane Ackerman
“The best way to know God is to love many things.” ―Vincent van Gogh
Mockingbird Chronicles 