Communion of Saints

Communion of Saints

The point at which one begins story is arbitrary, a bracket put around an experience to help understand and/or savor it.  I am choosing to begin this story by recollecting my dream in January 2009 featuring both Jesus and Sheela-na-gig.  I could have begun it with my son’s birth or with his death.  I could have begun it with an imaginary encounter with monks of the Ceile Day order whose footsteps I follow.

It is before 6 a.m. on April 27, 2014.  This day marks the 45^th anniversary of the birth of my first child, Arthur Donovan.  I stand on an ancient stone on the beach near the ferry dock on the Isle of Iona off the west coast of Scotland awaiting the appearance of the sun so I might sing the words that have been sung here for centuries.  As the point of light appears on the horizon and begins to intensify, I start to chant and to bath myself in the first 9 rays of the sun.

The timing of my pilgrimage was dictated by the date of the silent retreat I am attending on this Isle so important in the spread of a unique form of Christianity in the Celtic lands.  Until a few weeks before my arrival I was unaware there was a Sheela-na-gig on the island.   It is on the exterior wall of the medieval nunnery ruins I walked through on my way to my hotel after disembarking from the ferry yesterday afternoon.  It was they who called me here, Jesus and Sheela-na-gig.  The dream foretold it, and set me on the path of inquiry that brought me here on this day.

Blood Lines

The experience I described in ‘When One of us is Wounded, We all Bleed’, when I dreamed my husband punched his brother and then woke with blood on my hand, got my attention.  Writing from the dream helped me to discover some of the ways I have blood on my hands.  Still I felt the dream was asking more of me.

Because my wounding occurred in a church sanctuary and because I was raised Roman Catholic, my experience of blood appearing on my hand without apparent cause made me think of the stigmata. Stigmata are bodily wounds, sores or sensation occurring in the location of the crucifixion wounds of Jesus. It felt presumptuous  of me to relate my experience to the stigmata suffered by devout and selfless holy ones, still the similarity was eerie and I felt compelled to follow that thread.

Great Granddaughter

author's note:  This piece arose from a dream which was comprised solely of the words: Great Granddaughter

My granddaughter is of African descent.  Both her parents are loving Caucasian female educators.  They have invited my beloved and me to be part of her village.

May my great granddaughter be born loving and being in awe of her vagina.  May she never hear it referred to as her down there or be taught to eliminate its fragrance or be called unclean when she bleeds.

I did not enter this life through my mother’s vagina.  My mother was relieved to be offered the more sanitary surgical method.  She never peered into her own vagina.

When One of Us is Wounded We All Bleed

 author's note: The following occurred during a Women's Dream Quest at the First Congregational Church in March of this year.

In the sanctuary I dream of my husband punching his brother.  It is something he has wanted to do for a long time.  I wonder how he feels after he’s done it.  Does it give him the satisfaction he anticipated?  Does he experience remorse, guilt, sorrow?  Does violence ever result in true satisfaction or does it merely allow a breakthrough to what lies beneath it?

After writing the dream, I go into the men’s room and find blood on the sink.  Frank red blood against white porcelain.  I’m shocked and mildly disturbed. It is a small amount of blood; thinly covering less than one square inch.  I look at my own hands and am surprised to see broken skin and blood on the knuckle of my ring finger on my left hand.  The blood on the sink did not come from my hand.  The wound on my hand is too small to have produced even that much blood.  Did the wound appear while I slept?  I’m shaken to realize how thin the veil between the worlds is.  I dream of a fist connecting with a jaw and my knuckle bleeds.

Bleed Through

During a Women’s Dream Quest, I received a dream of my husband punching his brother in the face.  I woke with blood on the knuckle of the ring finger of my left hand.  I went to the men’s room for my morning toilet, and found blood on the sink.

I now have a new name for the experience of encountering the same image in dreams and waking life.  I call it bleed through.