Every Generation
A powerful dream image closed the year 2015 for me.
I am climbing down a ladder that is just metal rings bolted into the side of a steep stone wall. It seems to be some kind of chamber, or maybe the cavern left over after mineral excavation. It's enormous, silent and eerie.
On my way down I glance over my left shoulder and am shocked to see a life-size crucifix that is also bolted into the stone wall. Hanging from the crucifix is a skeleton wearing the crown of thorns.
Seeing this, the hair on the back of my neck stands up and my heart catches in my throat. As I hang there on the ladder shivering, a voice says:
"Every generation must put the flesh back on these bones."
There are many resonances to this image and I will offer just a few of my own. (I’d love to hear from any readers who see other things in this stark vision.)
To begin, my son, Andrew Shepherd, and I have been working on the script for a video featuring three religious leaders who spoke at the recent Parliament of World’s Religions gathering. Their focus is interfaith dialogue and they were explaining how the prevailing belief that exploring other religions will water down your own faith has not been true for them; that they feel more excited about their own tradition as they find parallels to and new insights for the perennial truths in religion. This idea seems central to the whole enterprise of interfaith engagement and we are finding ways to highlight this approach in our film. The image of the skeletal version of the central character of the Christian story suggests to me that we are looking at the essential truth of the story ~ that which endures and supports the temporal aspect.
Another resonance is with the great T.S. Eliot prose-poem from his play “The Rock” in which the chorus chants these lines:
Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten
or ripe.
And the church must be forever building, and always decaying.
and always being restored.
http://www.arak29.am/PDF_PPT/6-Literature/Eliot/Chtherock_eng.htm
The voice that admonishes each generation to put new flesh on the old bones is acknowledging that the outer structures of faith – i.e. the church, organized religion – are always decaying and thus must always be created anew for a new time.
Those strike me as the larger, more universal implications of such an image. On a more personal level, I felt that the dream was showing me that in my continual craving to mine the treasures of the ancestral wisdom (what else am I doing climbing down into the rock pit mine!) I risk the danger of losing the humanity, the flesh and blood, of the spiritual impulse that makes these stories come alive to serve and inspire. The admonition is thus very much directed to me: I am a generation that needs to find new life in the ancient myths.
Thankfully, the dreams keep me connected to what is moving in the deep recesses of the soul. I share this glimpse of that world with you today ~ the first day of a new year of tearing down and building up!
With affection,
Rebecca
