Around 7 A.M., I awoke with this dream of direction:

I was visiting Mother Scott, an old nun, in the convent parlor, the late afternoon sun slanting through the double hung windows onto the highly polished parquet floor. “Liz, I want you to have this bible. It was my sister’s,” she said, smoothing her black veil over her shoulder. From the recesses of the cushions supporting her back, she withdrew the bible draped in black cloth and handed it to me. Its faded cover and onion-skin thin pages touched me as I said goodbye.

This dream supports a recently-made decision to return to my Jerusalem Bible, a Christmas gift from my parents in 1965. Like the bible in the dream, its yellowing pages, its worn cover, its shrunken red ribbon marker, mine was a daily companion that illustrates significant moments of my spiritual quest, noted by comments, dates, stars, highlighting, at times, in orange. However, with my AA recovery work drawing me into its literature, I shelved my Jerusalem Bible, until now.

Mother Scott, an old nun, my extraverted shadow,was a distant cousin and a member of the community I used to belong to. Her listening evoked my conflicted decision to enter the Kenwood Noviceship to become a nun, like her. But unlike her, I did not stay, but remained long enough to explore the depth of my spirituality that has been ongoing.

And within the experience of my end time returns Mother Scott, with another bible to study the implications of the Cosmic Christ. I’m in good company.