dreamt in early 1990 at age 32 ... reproduced here is the first half of the dream, because some friends who have asked for this publication will be mostly interested in the part about the church and Jesus. I still remember my surprise when I awoke, to think I had had such a Jesus-themed dream, having been raised a Jew, and then thinking about Jung's theory of the mass subconscious. I have maybe a hundred more dreams written down. A Jungian would have a field day.
I had agreed to apartment-sit for a woman named Sylvia. Sylvia was an aging, or late-middle-aged, successful attorney. She was very observant, the kind who could size a person up at a glance. Very serious, but not without a certain droll humor.
Sylvia was going on a trip. Her apartment was located uptown where my mother's is [my mother died in 2002], but the interior seemed more like a country cottage. Dark wood was the most persistent motif, covering even the walls. Mullioned windows let sun into the kitchen. The other rooms were dark, and the whole place spoke of an intellectual inhabitant, comfortable with herself and not afraid to combine the rustic with the urbanity of her life.
Like my mother, she kept houseplants which I was to water. However, they were rather unruly, of free foliage, spilling around the sunny kitchen windows, unlike my mother's plants carefully arranged in the living room under a Gro-lite.
So I packed some things for Claire [aged 2 when I had this dream] and myself and we took up a short residence in Sylvia's apartment.
I had to run downtown again every couple of days, maybe to feed my cats, or pick up more clothes for the baby. But I don't remember actually being in my apartment.
On one of these forays downtown, I was walking across 7th Street on my return trip to Sylvia's, and just in front of St. George's Ukrainian Catholic church I noticed a fragment of a wooden statue which had been put out on the curb, perhaps by a church janitor, as trash. I recognized it as something very old and important. I looked closer and saw that it was the severed lower legs of some medieval mythological figure, which perhaps had adorned the exterior of a building. The two thin, bird-like legs were fused, carved from one piece of wood with no space between them, and had formed the pedestal of the missing upper parts of the statue. I believe the legs were severed below the knee, yet somehow I knew the missing knees had been bony and protruding. The feet were splayed and duck-like, with four webbed toes on each, and formed what would have been the base of the statue.
[some day I'll scan in my little drawing here]
The wood may have been painted once, but no color remained. It was aged and cracked, centuries old.
A black limousine pulled up to the curb and two priests stepped out. One of them was trim, middle-aged, with black, slightly grizzled hair.
I turned to him and said, "You know, this is from a Gremlin."
"I know," he agreed.
"I'm on my way somewhere now, and I can't carry this with me. But I don't want to leave it as trash. Can I store it inside the church?"
He granted me permission to bring the wooden fragment inside.
I carried the piece of statue up the church steps, through a large door and into the shadows under a colonnade that bordered on a large, landscaped, sunlit church courtyard. The floor under this very tall colonnade was made of cobblestones. I heard water running somewhere nearby; perhaps there was a small stream or fountain in the yard.
I found a spot at the base of one of the columns where I thought the fragment of the Gremlin would be out of the way. I was trying to be considerate of the church and of those who worked or worshiped there. I leaned the fragment against the column, but when I looked up I saw Jesus hanging on a cross attached to the column above me.
This crucifix was supposedly only stone statuary belonging to the church, the priests walking by saw a statue of Jesus, but I could see that THIS WAS THE FLESH-AND-BLOOD JESUS HANGING ON THE CROSS. More priests walked by, oblivious! Jesus looked sad beyond words, because his real message was not being heard, and the man that he had been, the things he had said and done, were being so misquoted, misused and misunderstood. The very people who made him their religious figurehead could not see him at all.
These priests -- who pretend to be closer to God than mere worldly men, who pretend to intervene and speak to God on behalf of the followers of their "flock", who would have their followers believe that Jesus was the only living Son of God and that Jesus wanted to be worshiped as God rather than teach their congregants that Jesus realized his own Godhead and sought to help us realize the Godhead in each of us, these priests who act as though they own the copyright on Truth -- these priests did not even recognize the real Jesus right in front of them!
But I stayed mum. I didn't have much time, and I thought if these men could not see, then they are not supposed to see, and they are not able to see. Also, they were letting me retain custody (only because they failed to recognize its worth) of this important piece of wooden mythology, and, moreover, they had granted me permission to store it in their church until I could recover it later. So, out of a desire not to insult or anger them, and, more than this, out of respect for the living Jesus on the cross, I moved the Gremlin to a different spot, and continued on my way back uptown to Sylvia's apartment.
10 November 2009
02 November 2009
31 October 2009
Riches in the Dark
In a box marked "Halloween" many years ago, lie Baron Samedi, a skeletal man and woman dancing to mariachi on a Day of the Dead tin piece, a strand of pumpkin lights from the 99 Cent Store, an iron black-cat candle holder, and other items of death and darkness.
Blessed Samhain, I see on a friend's Facebook page. Samhain, the older holiday, way before there were K-marts, TVs, cheap store-bought costumes or Christianized culture. Samhain, summer's end, the onset of the dark, the Celtic new year. The time to celebrate the end of harvest, hunker down for the cold season, light a bonfire, toss an apple peel and contemplate our future, look back to connect with our ancestors.
Ancestors. Do they hover around in some sort of after-life? Or -- contrary to our narrow and linear view of Time -- does everything that ever existed or will exist actually take place all at once, giving us more access than we are disposed to admit we have to the beings who lived in the "past" and the "future"? Or are we simply not as separate and distinct as we like to think we are and other beings past, present and future live in us and flow through us? I wouldn't know. But I do know: "I can feel them."
More than that, I "talk" with them. They have helped me heal. They have come to me in my dreams with critical aid and information. My mother and I are terrific friends now, beginning a year or two after she died seven years ago. My father, 32 years later, still pops in, "Always standing behind my left shoulder, so real that I feel like if I turn around fast enough I would see him," a phrase I've wrapped in quotes because I remember my shock the day my mother said those words to me, when I had been experiencing the very same thing (right down to his being behind my left shoulder). My grandmother Dora, encouraging patience. My grandmother Helen, urging me to get up off my ass. My grandfather Louis, helping me find the balance between freedom and responsibility.
Did I make all this up? Sure, in the same way we make up everything about our life and our world. We choose our yarns, sit down together, and knit our own stories into the continuous fabric that we call History. Then we write about it and teach it as though History is some sort of standalone Fact. History is what we have created!! The strands that "were" knitted by my parents, by their parents as young immigrants, by their parents in their shtetls shops and fields, by their parents in the desert, their parents in slavery, their parents in caves and tents, all those strands are still here somewhere in my sweater. My sweater connects to your sweater. It connects to a Celt stirring an iron pot, an Iroquois sitting on the floor of a council tent, a lone archer stalking her food by moonlight, a poet contemplating his crossing of the river by the Brooklyn ferry. It connects to my great-grandchildren, to an action taken by someone a millenium from now that was set in motion by something I said or created or did -- some stitches I added -- this year.
I take the box, cross out Halloween and write: "Samhain". I will unwrap and pin up these invitations to my ancestors. And to yours. And to the future we are inventing. Come in, all of you, put your feet up, let's mingle.
A wonderful Samhain, full of mystery and wisdom and guidance and music and feasts of all kinds. May we all spend some months connecting with those who have passed over, and those who will come after, preparing alone and together to get it right as we invent our future.
Blessed Samhain, I see on a friend's Facebook page. Samhain, the older holiday, way before there were K-marts, TVs, cheap store-bought costumes or Christianized culture. Samhain, summer's end, the onset of the dark, the Celtic new year. The time to celebrate the end of harvest, hunker down for the cold season, light a bonfire, toss an apple peel and contemplate our future, look back to connect with our ancestors.
Ancestors. Do they hover around in some sort of after-life? Or -- contrary to our narrow and linear view of Time -- does everything that ever existed or will exist actually take place all at once, giving us more access than we are disposed to admit we have to the beings who lived in the "past" and the "future"? Or are we simply not as separate and distinct as we like to think we are and other beings past, present and future live in us and flow through us? I wouldn't know. But I do know: "I can feel them."
More than that, I "talk" with them. They have helped me heal. They have come to me in my dreams with critical aid and information. My mother and I are terrific friends now, beginning a year or two after she died seven years ago. My father, 32 years later, still pops in, "Always standing behind my left shoulder, so real that I feel like if I turn around fast enough I would see him," a phrase I've wrapped in quotes because I remember my shock the day my mother said those words to me, when I had been experiencing the very same thing (right down to his being behind my left shoulder). My grandmother Dora, encouraging patience. My grandmother Helen, urging me to get up off my ass. My grandfather Louis, helping me find the balance between freedom and responsibility.
Did I make all this up? Sure, in the same way we make up everything about our life and our world. We choose our yarns, sit down together, and knit our own stories into the continuous fabric that we call History. Then we write about it and teach it as though History is some sort of standalone Fact. History is what we have created!! The strands that "were" knitted by my parents, by their parents as young immigrants, by their parents in their shtetls shops and fields, by their parents in the desert, their parents in slavery, their parents in caves and tents, all those strands are still here somewhere in my sweater. My sweater connects to your sweater. It connects to a Celt stirring an iron pot, an Iroquois sitting on the floor of a council tent, a lone archer stalking her food by moonlight, a poet contemplating his crossing of the river by the Brooklyn ferry. It connects to my great-grandchildren, to an action taken by someone a millenium from now that was set in motion by something I said or created or did -- some stitches I added -- this year.
I take the box, cross out Halloween and write: "Samhain". I will unwrap and pin up these invitations to my ancestors. And to yours. And to the future we are inventing. Come in, all of you, put your feet up, let's mingle.
A wonderful Samhain, full of mystery and wisdom and guidance and music and feasts of all kinds. May we all spend some months connecting with those who have passed over, and those who will come after, preparing alone and together to get it right as we invent our future.
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