Set Free

A Quick Sharp Stab

For years they have been in my dreams, and the injury always comes in the same place.

I had a vivid dream some years ago of being in a Roman setting, and in that case the wound came from a dagger, delivered by the patriarch of my dream family.

Last night it was a spear, pinning me to the ground, every muscle in my chest in spasm, front and back.

Someone, a beautiful and eccentric woman doing some sort of sound therapy (I really can’t explain it) with me years ago, had a vision of me in a canoe, and the injury coming from an arrow. Her frame of reference might have been reincarnation, but whether or not I want to go there, I have to acknowledge that this motif appears again and again. What does it mean?

When I woke up last night, it all made sense. The wound is close to the heart, but it is never fatal, or not instantly so. The wound is painful, and my whole body reacts to the invasion of the foreign object. I convulse protectively.

I do this all the time. I sleep this way, turned in on myself, though the only threat to my peace is a 9 pound cat who wants to be as near to me as possible.

I’ve been told by a nurse that the sore place I associate with the dream wounds is actually tender for physiological reasons, a place where the trail of lymph nodes criss-crosses.

It’s not clear how I hurt my back, but it is clear that it happened at a time when my focus had been drawn to past emotional injuries, as I worked on learning to live in my changed body.

One encouraging note: in last night’s dream, for the first time, I was not alone when injured. A brave friend stood beside me. Since everyone you meet in a dream represents some part of yourself, I find that encouraging, to think there is some part of me symbolized by her particular heroic qualities.

Of course this also means I have some relationship to the assailant, sometimes seen and other times not…

More to ponder, naturally.

Appointment with the massage therapist at 8 a.m., thankfully.

A Bag of Campaign Memorabilia

I decided on two forms of Advent practice. One is represented by a ticker in the sidebar here, and it is a commitment to matter, to keep moving through Advent despite the challenges of doing so in a busy season. I'm close to a weight goal I established several months ago as being perhaps reachable by the end of the year, but I realize that the temptations of this festive season of the year might make it more difficult, particularly in combination with the early darkness that grows more profound each day as we work our way toward darkness around 4 p.m.

But there is also an inner life, and my dreams have been vivid, and I determined to make recording my dreams, or at least reflecting on them, an Advent practice. It seems fitting, as we move toward the texts of Advent 4 and the Sunday after Christmas, in which Joseph responds to his dreams.

Last night I had a dream about sorting through boxes of things that belonged to my parents. There was more to the dream, but here is what I feel moved to write about this morning. One of the boxes contained bags of campaign memorabilia emblazoned with my maiden name. My father was a politician, so in some ways that's not an entirely unlikely thing to find, although in this case the materials looked too new to have been from his career, the buttons too modern. There was my maiden name, Spong, over and over again.

I've been contemplating what comes next in my work life, and one of the possibilities is the subject of a meeting tomorrow. It's an exciting possibility, but also a bit terrifying because it is something new.

I woke this morning asking this question: "What would a Spong do?" I thought about my dad, and my cousin Jack and my grandmother Emily, all bearers of that name, and I realized, "They would step out in faith. They would never cower or fret. They would hear a call and answer it." Not a one of them worried or worries about what others think. They are a picture of courage, a courage based in faith.

Joseph dreamed things that guided him to do the unusual, the unlikely, even the unspeakable in his cultural context. Surely I can take a chance, too?