In My Dream Last Night

In my dream last night Rosean and I are with a young woman priest. We are all walking somewhere together, maybe at a mall. She tells us there is something she has known since before the beginning of time. Rosean wants her to tell us what that is. She is quiet. We wait. Then there is an interruption of some sort. People come and the priest talks to them. We continue walking, looking in shops, greeting friends. Rosean and I keep waiting for a moment when we can ask her again. There are too many distractions.

This is the sort of dream that begs for active imagination. In my imagination I can go back into the dream, dream the dream onward, maybe find out what I couldn’t learn last night. To do this I have to listen very carefully. My awake consciousness will want to take charge of the dream images, put words in everybody’s mouths instead of letting the characters speak out of their own integrity. The sign that I have set aside my usual conscious perspective and heard the truth of the dream will be that I learn something new.

I focus once again on the priest. She is short, dark eyed, with dark brown hair held back in a clip. She wears a grey skirt and powder blue blouse with a clerical collar, shoes with low heels. Her lipstick darkens her mouth to an earthy pottery color. She is serious, intent. Rosean and I walk one on each side of her. We are in an open plaza outside a number of small shops.

I stop and face her. “Please tell me”, I say, “what you know.”

She smiles sagely out of her deep brown eyes. “You know what I know,” she says.

I sigh. I hate these kinds of answers. I tell her I can’t think of a single thing I know since before the beginning of time. She looks a little nonplussed. Rosean and I both wait. We are not going to let her off the hook this time.

She looks at us both for a long moment, as though concerned that maybe we really don’t want to know what she has to tell us. We wait patiently. She nods and reaches in a large handbag she has been carrying. She pulls out a silver chalice and paten.

The chalice is etched with intricate designs. She hands it to me. When I touch it I know it is very ancient. As I look into it, it begins to fill with water. I watch the liquid reach the rim and spill over. As I stand there holding the cup, streams of water flow out in four directions, north, east, south, and west. I realize I do know this image. I have painted it, many years ago.

I set the chalice down on the ground. It continues to fountain.

The priest hands me the paten. As I hold it it expands. The plaza becomes a great plain stretching away to the horizon in all directions. Green grass waves. The streams from the chalice carve their way through the rich soil. There are tiny fish in the streams now. Little animals of all sorts come to drink and bathe. Miniature people scoop water into pots and take it away to their camp sites, bring their laundry to wash and their livestock to water

I am both holding the paten and standing on it with Rosean and the priest. I set it down, placing the chalice on it. The priest and I look at one another for a long silent moment.

I shrug. “I know this. But I don’t know what it means.”

“Yes you do,” she replies. “You know exactly what it means.” She taps me on the chest. “Know with your heart, my dear.”

I come to see that the image I have been given is a picture of divinity in its nurturing and sustaining capacity. The Holy is our ground of being and the nourishing water of our souls. It is central to all life, the most important thing. Everything moves and has it’s being in this great sustaining presence: The Tao, the Way of Things, the Source, God.

The priest is staring at me. When I finally look into her eyes once more she smiles at me. She smiles at Rosean, holding her eyes as well. She reaches out and takes each of us by the hand. “Feed my sheep,” she tells us. She squeezes our hands. Then she disappears.

I’m left with the image of her lipstick hanging by itself in the air like the smile of the Cheshire cat.