August 31, 2024

An extremely stressful day for reasons that must remain private. I can always fall asleep after dinner and wine, thank God, but when I woke up later in the night, it was no use. So I took a drop of liquid melatonin with water, and then just lay there going through what had happened, and realizing again there was nothing I could have done to avoid it, and that I'll never be able to do anything about it. I'll simply have to endure this person's occasional outbursts which, like violent storm squalls, thankfully vanish into sunny brightness as if nothing unpleasant ever happened.

. . . I become aware that I am no longer hopelessly waiting to fall asleep but silently and restfully surfing Hypnagogic imagery. As in waking reality, I'm lying comfortably on my right side, only now I'm floating smoothly through the chiaroscuro interior of what I both feel and perceive is a very large and old, even ancient church. As my dreaming soul cruises slowly through it, I sense a presence up in the Nave, and as I leave it behind I think, I wish I could have stayed there. . .  

As I continue lucidly floating along, I soon find myself surrounded by another and even grander structure. It's even darker than the ancient church and so immense, I can neither see or sense any end to its height, length and depths. It's a very important place, a holy, utterly silent and yet powerfully dynamic space. . .

A seamless transition to standing at the balcony-like edge of one level of this fathomless "place" which I sense extends as though endlessly in every direction. There is no discernible light source and yet, as though I'm living in a black-and-white film, I suddenly perceive the white figure of my ex husband standing two or three levels above mine. He's looking down at me and earnestly telling me something, but I can't hear a word he's saying. I look around me, but discern no means of climbing up to his level, and apparently he can't come to me.

Abruptly, I find myself on what feels like the measureless ground floor. I keep moving with a purposeful intent, which causes me to ignore a man who says something to me. Kneeling, I immediately begin going through an assortment of items waiting for me, things I both desire and need and which have been given to me; have been waiting for me like gifts beneath a Christmas tree and, at last, I can gather them all to me. 

A seamless transition from gathering up my gifts to parting a lovely gauzy curtain leading into a luminous, and beautifully appointed room (from black and white to technicolor!) I know this is only a small antechamber adjoining my extensive private living quarters. And at the moment, I've come here to remove a large white bird resembling a laying hen (only it is much lovelier and as luminous as everything else in the room) from the top of a white column where she has perched herself. Not that she doesn't belong there (because she and others like her are indeed permitted free reign here) but at the moment I need to get her out of the way because I'm expecting an important visitor. Yet I can't help laughing when, with a haughty squawk, the bird flies off her pedestal so swiftly she can't stop herself from crashing against the opposite wall. But she suffers no more than slightly injured pride. 

Dream Notes and a Discovery:

I knew the lovely, luminous, colorful room I swiftly and familiarly entered was part of my spacious living quarters, which mysteriously adjoined that immeasurable dark "dimension" I had just come from.

As I lay motionless in bed after waking up, I recognized how this dream's initiation was very much like the night a few months ago when I simply couldn't sleep because St. Olaf was keeping me awake for a purpose. Only this time, I was already in a great church as I became aware I had fallen asleep and was "riding" hypnagogic imagery like a supernatural river running through it. I immediately thought of Saint Olaf. Then directly after I gathered up my vital gifts, I suddenly found myself running into my private quarters. At this point, the atmosphere of the dream changed dramatically, instantly becoming bright and colorful and also wonderfully lighthearted and even amusing.  Nevertheless, this did not diminish the urgency I experienced to free up the pedestal for what truly belonged there. 

The more I thought about this dreaming experience, the more I felt Saint Olaf was behind it all, his signature the bright and amusingly chaotic conclusion. As I went about my morning, I found myself smiling, and while preparing my smoothie, I reasoned that he might have been thinking, Well, she’s fond of chickens. She loved and misses her laying hens. . . And so he populated my beautifully luminous palatial quarters with glorified versions of the chickens I used to keep when I lived on five acres in Louisiana? This struck me as really funny, and the more I think about it, the more I feel and believe King Olaf had a great sense of humor. I truly felt it might have been Saint Olaf teasing me after helping me fall asleep, and enter the dream space through hypnagogic imagery, as he has done before.

I also think that, referring to how weak I feel and therefore believe I am, Saint Olaf was urging me not to be such a chicken. And he might have gone on to say, "You're not as weak as you think or let yourself believe."

I wonder now if that first great and very old church I found myself slowly traveling through might possibly be where Saint Olaf is buried. Because at one point in time when his holy remains were being moved, his body was lost, and no one knows where it is now.

“All we know is that the mortal remains of Olaf Haraldsson must lie under the ground somewhere in Trondheim. Yet it is perhaps fitting that we know no more, as long ago the human King Olaf Haraldsson was translated somehow into Saint Olaf, putting him beyond the mere timespace limitations of human existence. Therefore, in a basic sense he is far more real than a mere worn name on a tombstone. The mystique persists, as it should. Otherwise there would be little reason for the arduous pilgrimage, the Pilegrimsleden, which many hundreds of people make each year over more than 600 km from Oslo through Oppland and the Gudbrandsdal valley where Olaf led his faithful band on the inland March from Valldal, right up to the Pilgrim Center in Trondheim. There may no longer be a visible shrine to the saint in Trondheim Cathedral where those who seek healing can still pray… but in a way there no longer needs to be one, as Saint Olaf’s active spirit, for those who believe, has remained firmly in place.” – John Carr, The Viking Saint – Olaf II of Norway

The Discovery

The more I thought about the encounter with my ex husband in this dream, the more uneasy I felt about not having been able to hear what he was trying to tell me. Our divorce was amicable, but absolute. Dreams had transformed me into a completely different person, and he was who he had always been; co-existence was impossible. I moved away, and we communicated only when legal matters required we do so. I had had another dream with him recently that planted a dark seed of concern inside me regarding his well-being, and after last night's dream, I simply had to call him and make sure he was alright. I learned that he was doing well, loving his new job, but that he also had Blood Cancer, not leukemia, it wasn't that serious, people with this condition could live for years and feel perfectly well, as he did, as the experimental treatment only prescribed two pills every evening, and there were no side effects. He felt just fine, and he didn't even have to pay for the medicine because he was part of an ongoing clinical trial, otherwise the pills would have cost him $100,000 a year. We "chatted brightly" for about twenty minutes before saying goodbye.

After the day of this conversation with my ex, I woke up at 3:00 in the morning  and began to pray. For the last few days, I have been listening to the audio book version of The Viking Saint which I narrated, enjoying the fruits of my labor and the story, as I can't do when I'm editing the individual audio files after recording them, focusing on the narrative's flow, and the quality of the audio rather than  the story. Just before I called my ex and we spoke audibly for the first time in years (vs. silently via emails) I had listened to one of the final chapters in The Viking Saint, which is all about the numerous and well documented miracles attributed to Saint Olaf both before and after his death. 

And so as I lay in bed, I did what countless people have done. I prayed to Saint Olaf to, if it was God's will, heal my ex husband so no trace remains of his blood cancer. I'm thinking that if my ex is abruptly and completely healed, it might finally knock him off his agnostic pedestal, which reminds me of the vain proud stubborn chicken in my dream I forcibly knocked off its pedestal. 

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