Category Archives: Dream Story

Wisdom From Dream Time

Posted on by
Reply

p1050683I’m sitting in a café, at a small square table for four, with my husband beside me. We’re considering what to order, involved in simple, pleasant conversation. I notice you taking a seat against the wall, at a rectangular table across from us, set for six, with a woman friend sitting beside you. You’ve turned in your seat, and now face me. We recognize each other, so I excuse myself to approach you, to say hello and we embrace each other. I feel a stiff brace on your back, under your clothes, and register concern as I know your health can be unsteady, that you can suffer greatly from a chronic condition. I introduce you to my husband, giving context that I attended one of your retreats. You say yes, three-four years ago, and I quietly correct, this past year, though silently realize, given I’d held intention to attend for several years, how easy to understand all is true.  After a few more words, I wish you well and return to my table to dine with my husband. 

I ponder this dream, register its mood and energy. I think about my time at that retreat, what I learned and brought home. I lightly hold in my palm like a prayer stone, considering me as each dream character, then each as who they are to me. These words come to mind, through my pen, onto the page of my morning journal.

A kind gesture.

A warm embrace.

An acknowledgement

of what and who, a teacher who guided, whose gifts served.

A simple hello.  A simple goodbye.

Now to claim of one’s own gifts.

Now to stand in one’s own spiritual authority.

Feasting with my beloved at the table of our abundance.

Now to nourish the seeds of my own sacred marriage, my own inner teacher.

Now to let blossom my own inner wisdom.

This dream and its medicine revealed, the fruit.

Fiercely Tender Moments

Posted on by
2

It’s been a season full of travel.  A flight a month since August. Settle into a breath and some. Focus on my work companioning leaders. Tend to home and heart. Then shift back to preparing and packing. One more to go, in mid-December, and then to sink and surrender into the gifts of winter’s cold and darkness.

Already the anticipation of immersing myself in the making of photo books from two remarkable journeys. Slow dinners of roasted roots and braised meats, best with our favourite fulsome reds, cellared especially for now. Wool and down, fleece and flannel, coats and sweaters, hats and scarves, boots and gloves, took over closets and beds on Labour Day, a month early, but prescient given snow that came well before summer went. Though underneath, until recently, the still vibrant and beauty of autumn. This is the wisdom medicine of such early snows, trusting the hidden beauty remains.

P1040136One of these flights included a trip to Saltspring Island, BC. In October the stars and my schedule finally aligned to attend an annual dream retreat hosted by Toko-pa Turner. I’d been intent to sit in this circle, to learn and practice more deeply the artistry of dreamwork, as a facet of my life work of attending to the inner life to live and lead with kindness, clarity and wisdom.  For three days, this multicultural, multi-generational circle of thirty women feasted on the harvest of our night-time dreams, and the meals lovingly prepared from the organic gardens of Stowel Lake Farm, an intentional community and wellness centre.

Pespectives with Panache, 2018Invited to bring a talisman for the dream altar, and for introductions, my initial choice of a small ceramic evoking Sedna of the deep waters was impulsively over-ridden by Athena, the Wisdom, Warrioress and Writer.  A gift from beloved friends and mentors, with whom a year earlier I was initiate in how to be, witness, and serve in shadowed and breaking times, in a complex circle of chaos and conflict.

She served me well, that statue forged in her Greek homeland, reminding me of tender fierceness and  fierce tenderness. Qualities to embrace and embody. Needed now. Placed on the altar’s corner, she became a presence of “unselfconscious majesty” reminding me of who we each truly are. Need to be. Now. For the duration, she became witness to our sacred dreams spoken in silence, written in words, sang and danced in sunshine and moonglow.

During our final morning, as homage this circle, these women, our dreams, and to what Toko-pa called our “Holy Helpers,” I quietly noticed and wrote, and then offered to the centre as farewell

Fiercely Tender Moments

One sits under the portico. Eyes closed.

Soft breath attuned to soft falling rain.

A colourful blanket wrapped about her shoulders,

keeping her safe and warm in the early morning cool.

 

Another sits writing down her dreams.

Her turquoise heart gift glows with appreciation for a new-found friend.

I can see her as her twenty-year old self. Imagine a long-haired hippy…strong, tall Scandinavian beauty.

 

Noiselessly shuffling tarot cards.

Clunky wooden bracelets a contrast to her long, elegant, gold ringed fingers.

A grace, a beauty that is remarkable, enthralling even.

 

One, then another, and another circle around the dream altar.

Honey scented candles softly illuminate these simple riches.

Taking in, reverently touching. Bowing before soul-filled symbols. Talismans of thresholds.

What is teacher? Healer? Warrioress? How do they feed and inspire my own visionary?

 

Heads bent over journals.

Pens softly scribing night time dreams, day time visions.

Intentions. Reflections.

 

A pause…

Hot creamy coffee sipped.

Buttered toast tasted.

 

Thick rain pouring steadily down, muting the vibrancy of this autumn morning glory.

Kitchen clatter reminds us of home soon to come.

 

Across the room a smile of morning greeting.

Closer still, a touch, an embrace.

Still the sacred silence honoured.

 

We are power in the heart.

Sweet honey in the rock.

PS – This is my first post since I “freshened up” my website. It’d been a few years and was time to refine the focus. Take a look and let me know what you think. Thanks and kindest regards.

Seven Star Sisters

Posted on by
Reply

Seven star sisters, each a Venus shining in the eastern morning sky.

 

Skin glows like moonbeams in the cloistered light of the hammam

Soft flesh – thighs, breasts and bellies

Hair loosened, free across forehead, neck and shoulder

Eyes half closed

Surrender.

 

Soaking in the warm and cool

pools of sensuous, history and story, ancient rituals

Tender dreams swirl up and through like the sandalwood incense wafting, scenting, sensing.

 

Exotic music out of time and place

Echoes of flamenco before it came to be

Imagining the route taken before making home in these Andalucian hills.

 

Hot honeyed tea, fresh with mint

a balm of generosity

Dates picked fresh

soft and warm and sweet as this moment.

 

Seven sister stars mindlessly float from hot to cool to hot again

Submerged in an elemental expanse of sky, of water

Footsteps languid on smooth clay floors

Two by two, give ourselves over to firm fingers, strong hands, primal stones.

 

Body aches and heart hurts

Monkey mind of spinning thought and worry

Give way to spacious possibility and healing hope

Up the spine.  Down the leg.

 

Tracing steps.

Following routes.

Coming home.

 

 

Another From the Little Red Jot Book

Posted on by
Reply

Sunday, September 3, 2017: at the old pool in the woods of Finca Buenvino, Spain

Ambling along the wooded path, morning sun dapples.

Gentle veer to the left and a slight decline reveals an old, maybe even ancient, archway.

A threshold into invited imagination.

Broken amphora and tree limbs.

The small square abandoned pool, its once white marble stones now stained from cork and chestnut leaves long dead and decayed.  Its once crystal waters, now dark and stagnant.

What story evoked, mystery imagined here?

She pushes the lattice gate, patina green with age, and enters a space out of time, out of place.  Another era.  Another life.

Walls made of stone and stucco.  Moss fans like sea coral across the surface.

A pool.  Square.  Its surface thick with algae.

Amphora cracked and gaping like a heart that never healed.

She remembers.

A little boy lost.

Following his dog, together running, leaping, caught in a moment of sunshine, lost in the reverie of play.

His mother calls, calls, calls. No reply.

Hot, tired and bitten by honey bees, he follows his dog who, smelling the fresh spring water and overcome by instinct, leaps into the pool below. 

Making his way down the slope, now at the pool’s edge, he wavers.  So hot.  So thirsty.  Overcomes the caution of his mother’s warning.

Splashes. Flounders. Grabs hold of the dog who wiggles out and away.

Kneeling by the edge she peers into the dank and murky depths, mesmerized by memory.

Searching.  Finding.

Lost.  Found.