Moriah had meditated in the night and a dream came to her, after that time, when she went back to sleep, before the dawn. She decided she would need some help and set out to visit with Father Bernie, to see what he made of the dream. When she got to Bernie’s house, he was getting ready to take a walk, in the lane, through the bogland with his three hedgehogs, a mother and two babies. He had found the mother, as a baby and he had often kept a warm hand over her when she slept on his pillow, sometimes wrapping her in in a small blue striped cap. The mother hedgehog trusted him with her two little babies at his house. Moriah trusted him with her dream also.

They sauntered on the green pathway, with promises and primroses in the banks, glowing in wheels of open, pale yellow flowers. Her dreams danced among the green and and the pale yellow, interrupted by the hedgehogs only a little. “Tell me what your unconscious is saying to you” is all Father Bernie said.  

Moriah said “ I’m caring for a baby that might fall down, if I do not watch out for him and keep my hand on him. He is on my pillow and I have left him there. Also dreamed I am up on a cliff and I want to get down from there in spite of being blocked on both sides. Inside there is a young man, at a desk. He tells me that there is only one way down and that is through a small white door. I open the wooden door. Tattered looking people, all colors, stand on the narrow stairs that goes down, down to a way out. They filled the space and there was very little movement. The people had lots of  dusty trash bags with them, full almost to the top. The air was dusty too. The bags were left down beside them as they waited.”

Reflections

Bernie listened attentively, as he now stood beside a bog hole and looked into the dark reflective water to ponder the dream. 

He could see their refections of their clothes  and even the hedge hogs’ reflections, as they went close to the edge of the bog hole, looking for grubs to eat, with a little chat to each other as they went.  

Father Bernie remembered to Moriah another dream, where she was assessing her life and wanted to be included in God’s Book of Life. Moriah said the man in this dream, giving her instructions, was very similar to the one, who had the Book of Life, in that previous dream. His desk, chair and fez hat were the same.  

Father Bernie thought her two dreams were connected, one with a falling down of the baby due to inattention and the other with an impatience with wanting to get down. Moriah talked about her struggles with impatience and her inattention in meditation. She felt she could do with more humility, patience and forgiveness.  

Father Bernie noticed that Moriah was falling over asleep on the grass, around the boghole and he slipped off to be on his way. He knew better than to wake her up, as she had a little temper when she was half asleep. 

Moriah had a long complicated dream with Father Bernie coming and going, saying stuff she faintly heard and received about n lover with whom she wanted to connect. He was her first love and she had forgotten all about him. She had replaced him with that which had turned into trash bags full of un-forgiveness. 

The trash bags, were now held by a jester, who wanted to exchange them for some truth and  humility. He suggested she had a habit of making herself into a God in the situations she found herself in. She needed to strip, if she wanted to get down from her false heights, her false gods, where she made herself the authority. 

He suggested that she was like the people on the stairs, that she was the people on the stairs. She needed to touch the bottom and crawl under the smoke of her bottomless pit and find a way out. This was the only way she could let go of her grief for leaving her first true love. 

This bright little fellow with long curly hair and a bright beyond reasonable brightness coming out of his shirt, turned his back on her, as she dreamed on. With great effort she called to him as he turned to leave. 

He said she would have to fall madly in love with her First Love again and that was the only way she would find balance and the baby would be safe. She could sit down right now under a tree and start talking to him again. 

As she got up, to go, in her dream, her body rolled over and into the bog hole. She hit her head on a branch, as she went down and sunk just a little into the black brown mud. She was sure she got a little push from the jester. She never fell in before. She lay there going over the details of her dream and cooling off in the shadow of the side of the bog hole. 

It was not easy to climb back out, as the sod gave way some, but eventually she was able to haul herself out onto the side and get ready to go home.

To be continued….

Comments: See blog titled “The Book of Life” dated 25th March 1925. 

Inanna Myth:  reference is to how Innana was stripped of all her earthly possessions, as she climbed down into the underworld where she was reduced to her pelt. 

All the best from Rose Marie.

A