Dream

Over the years I have paid attention to my dreams, sometimes more, sometimes less. I know enough about dreaming to realise that telling another person a dream is an invitation for them to see more of my inner working than I may be comfortable with , and perhaps more than I see myself at the moment. So, when I have recorded dreams they have gone into journals hidden behind lock and key or fairly robust passwords.

But on Wednesday night, and a very few will know the significance of that day, I had a dream like no other I had ever dreamed in my life.

I dreamed I saw a piece of paper, old and slightly yellowed like parchment. On it was drawn a perfect circle.

That's it. It seemed to me to be a very long dream, but as there was no story and no characters, and no movement, who can tell? It was one of those big dreams, whose import lingers well into waking consciousness. I relay it here not as an invitation for people to guess it's meaning but as a kind of record, perhaps mostly to myself.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Dreams ! On Friday I lost something precious to me. That night I dreamed several times of someone returning something to me but not what I had lost. Each dream made me feel better until I woke. Each time I woke I realized how broken my heart was. The next day in the garden a black bird on a branch in the tree in front of me lifted one wing and pointed it in the direction behind me. The bird did this twice. I continued on the way I was going and later that day what I had lost unexpectedly appeared.

10 February 2013 at 21:43

Merv said…

I understand the notion of 'blog as record'.
Without wanting to be the least bit morbid, this blog will probably (hopefully) survive you, as would a memoir. And yet it's somehow more vibrant and intimate than a memoir.
It's you.
Thank you.

10 February 2013 at 22:22

Elaine Dent said…

Jacob's ladder.
Zechariah's lampstand of gold.
Ezekiel's dry bones.
Joseph's sheaves.
Jeremiah's branch of an almond tree.
Peter's sheet full of animals.

You dream and ponder in good company.

11 February 2013 at 12:39

Anonymous said…

. . . and the Bishop's zero??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7ojb9kr-8o

11 February 2013 at 14:00

Kate said…

What a coincidence.
Because I've been pondering whether to email you to ask if you had any 'comfortable words' that might help me help my son and also our best friends whose son (my son's age - 24 - they were looking for a flat together) died suddenly at home in bed at 4 am on Thursday morning...

11 February 2013 at 23:19

Living the lies

In 1969, when I was 16 I left school and got a job as a labourer. My wages weren't high but to me they were a fortune and within a few months I bought my first car, a 1938 Morris 8 sports, this one here. It had a minuscule 4 cylinder engine and a wood framed body which meant it was slow and it flexed so much when going around corners that the doors would sometimes fly open. Nevertheless I thought it was pretty damned cool, especially with the modifications I made to the muffler for performance and advertising purposes, ie, removing it. Back then, the most popular TV program was The Avengers, in which the suave and resourceful hero, John Steed drove a 1928 3 Litre Bentley. Which looked kinda like my car, right? Yeah, right. Anyway, John Steed usually entered his car by leaping nimbly over the door, so I emulated him whenever possible. Now all this is preamble. I want to tell you about something that happened to me one day in Papanui Road, Christchurch. My car ...

How To Walk 800 km

John is just walking the 80 metres back to his bike here, but you get the general drift. The question I get asked more than any other at the end of the Hikoi is "how are your feet?" It's nice that people care, but my feet have never been an issue on long walks. Good shoes and socks prevent blisters and cushion the effects of long distances on hard surfaces, but I have had other issues. When walking the Camino Santiago knees, Achilles tendons and shin splints have all at one time or another given me trouble. This time round, these have all been fine and I finished feeling as though I could just keep on going indefinitely; to Cape Reinga if needs be. Over the last couple of years I have learned 6 things that have made all the difference. Namely: 1. Footwear. On the Camino I wore walking shoes - Salomon in 2009 and Asics in 2012. A year ago I changed to full walking boots - Salomon Cosmic 2 - and the difference was instant and major. When walking more than 15 minutes...

Why I Hold the Views I Do

St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder. One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

It happens sometimes. I have a question or am pondering some conundrum or other and the right book arrives at pretty much the right time. In a session with my supervisor a few months back Paul mentioned an article by Rene Girard, whom I had never heard of. I read the article and over the past month have read two of his books, The Scapegoat and this one. I have another couple sitting on my shelf and they have elbowed all others in my to be read pile out of the way and sit firmly on the top. Girard has pulled a number of threads together for me: he has enabled me to rethink the atonement in a way which is consistent with an evolving Universe: he presents a view of scripture which is again consistent with what I know of science but is also faithful to the Bible as the Word of God; he has given me, for the first time in my life a theology (if that is the right word) of Satan which makes sense to me. Most importantly for me, he is consistent with my own lived experience of God's s...

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and...

Available Light

Search This Blog