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Outside my study window, a shivering branch catches my attention: upon it has alighted a plump tree sparrow, its short beak foraging for insects. Upon its sandy-colored head and thin striped tail feathers, the morning sun plays like a child messing with finger-paints: shadows and light kiss. In no hurry, the sparrow’s foraging continues, as also its twittering enlivening my backyard: a microcosm for what occurs in many parts of the world.
But who has time to look? To enjoy, the myriad gifts freely offered in our daily bread? Certainly, matters of extreme urgency had filled much of my earlier life.
Only during Gloucester retreats did my inner chatter cease, and the seascape come alive with the message of Jesus: Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?
So the tree sparrow continues carrying the message of feeding. I have only to look out my study window to be filled—and the nourishment is always different.
From a heavy sleep, I awoke at 7:30 A.M., with these stunning dreams:
It is Sunday afternoon, visiting time in the hospital. Many relatives fill Mother’s room where she lies in bed, awake and animated. I notice a smiling tiger looking at me from under her bed, its furry tail wagging, occasionally thumping on the floor.
I’m awake in my hospital bed as a clerk hands me a box wrapped in lavender tulle and silky ribbons. Inside is a deep-throated white orchid. There is no card.
These dreams contain sparks of hope from my Dreamer, a restoration sorely needed from yesterday’s severe grief.
Sunday afternoon refers to a period of receptivity, comparable with Creation’s Seventh Day, with opportunities for new learning. The image of hospital suggests a milieu of care and treatment for the new learning to occur. Mother, my extraverted shadow, although ill, welcomes her relatives seated and standing around her bed. No one seems to notice the smiling tiger, a spirit animal with multiple associations. This one is tame and serves as guardian into the unknown. I claim it as I continue moving through the symptoms of my terminal illness.
In the second dream God, disguised as a clerk, presents me with a gift/grace; its wrappings of regal lavenders speak of royalty, as in the Kingdom Jesus preached in the gospels. But the gift of the deep-throated orchid, a rich feminine symbol, heals some scars of the wounded feminine in my psyche, more of the beautification process before my transition—but more still to be done.
Once again, the dreams evidence God doing for me what I cannot do for myself. I’m humbled.
Silence colors the psyche with splashes of freshness; seek its invigoration beneath noise-killers choking our planet. Once bound within cords of discipline, relish the surprises, therein, and rejoice: The Sacred is near …
