This fall, I’m in a virtual Jungian dream group led by certified dream facilitator Laura Huff of Fire by Night Dreamwork.* It’s fascinating work and I’m learning a lot. Bi-weekly, our small group members rotate sharing our dreams. My second go at sharing was last week and my dream imagery, crossing a threshold, struck a chord with the group.
Our assignment was to think on thresholds and possibly play with the imagery, as one member already did with art. Today, I was drawn to the Facebook profile picture of a friend who is not a member of our group. The photograph captures her standing at the whimsically painted doorway of her home. She took the picture during her milestone birthdays of 40 and again, recently, at 60.
I read her image description. I had read it before, but that’s how our guides work: I saw it again today as I’m “opening up this dream image.” She included the poem, below, in her description. It is so rich. And I share it with you not only because of its beauty, I share it because this time, too, this pandemic, is also a threshold for all of us. Individually and collectively.
The image pictured above, is my own, taken with my iPhone (10) last weekend of a new-ish park in my region. Again, as synchronicities go, when I decided to post today, I searched my iPhone images of curved pathways, which I adore so. But, I quickly settled on this. Fifteen or so minutes later, I realized the image was of a railroad trestle. Of course, I knew it was a trestle, but I realized that my dream imagery was also a railroad track. In my dream I was challenged to cross the old Taylors, SC, train tracks that we’d traversed each time we came and went to church. There’s more to the dream, but that’s not the point of this post, and I’m still unpacking the meaning my subconscious has gifted me through this imagery.*
*The beauty of working with an experienced dream facilitator is that she was the one who suggested that those tracks indicated to her, *personally,* a threshold. (Laura works with people virtually or in person, or with small groups that clients form or that she forms. Not everyone in our group lives in Nashville and right now all her work is virtual because of the pandemic, of course.)…I first took a short course with Laura 22 years ago. My being in this group now was a desire all that intervening time. Group members are gifted with basic instructions about how to record, capture and collect our dreams. BTW: *Everybody dreams.*
Abre la puerta
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Her name is Hope and she’s 12 years old,
going on 20 to life. She is god at 5 feet tall.
Abre la Puerta, open the door
and let her in, give her food.
Old Florence lives in the parking garage
at the university with her bags and packs
on the floor all around and she washes
her 84 year old body in the sink at the library
with a piece of flannel from her deceased husband’s pajamas.
Abre la Puerta, she’s god.
Florence is God, there’s a God named Florencia.
Remember that old abuelita, your grandest grandmother?
How she staggered toward you on legs so thin?
You were just a baby then and she smiled all over your infant self
and when you rose young and steaming from the void
that was God in her abuelita form, crying with joy just to see you,
“Que, que, que babybita” she’d say to you.
“Oh look at you, you babybaby you…”
“Look,” says God, “she talks.” God talks baby talk.
She opened a door in her belly for you.
Your grandmother is God. God is a grandmother
And you remember that red room where you grew? That was God.
And remember the warm hands that received you? That was God.
And you remember your father’s hands holding your face,
as though it were some kind of jewel that might break?
In that moment, he was God.
Your mate who snores, well… God snores, you see.
Your mate is God, who can never find his socks.
And your lover who burns for things you cannot give,
that is God also.
Your mate is God.
God is a housewife in mudface and hair curlers
at the door waving goodbye in a housecoat.
God wears a housecoat.
And, oh, the world that is young and has loved so deeply
and been betrayed, whose skin hangs like rags
and whose arms have no muscle and whose eyes have lost luster;
open the door of your heartaches and step through the door of your betrayal.
Pass through the hole that is left in your heart.
Pass through because it is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Pass through because it is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Do you remember that your legs are el anillo, the ring that circles the lover?
Your legs make a door, pass through the door,
Abre la Puerta pass the bulb through.
Open the door, the most sacred of doors,
the trail through your belly and the road up your spine.
Remember, fire is a door.
and song is a door. A scar is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
The forest on fire is a door
and the ocean ruined is a door.
Anything that needs us
or calls us to God is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Anything that hurts us,
anything that needs us opens the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
All of these years of seeming indestructibility,
the grandfather of your world dies
and his heart explodes
and yours breaks into a thousand pieces.
These are doors. Open the doors.
Abre la Puerta. Pass through these doors.
The world is a tribe of one-breasted women.
Walk through the door of the scars on their chest.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Over the edge of the world you go,
into the abyss. You march in time.
And put the best medicine in the worst of the wounds.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
The lake in which you almost drowned, that is a door.
The slap in the face that made you kiss the floor, that is a door.
The betrayal that sent you straight to hell, that is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Same old story, all strong souls first go to hell
before they do the healing of the world they came here for.
If we are lucky we return to help those still trapped below.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Hell is a door caused by pain.
Opening a flower, rain opening the Earth
the kisses of humans opening the heart of the world
these are doors.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
The scar drawn by razors, that is a door.
The scars that are doors are opened, are opened.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
The scars drawn by chainsaws across forests, those are doors.
The poem of new life that comes every dawn,
the soaring of sun, that is a door, the grave is a door.
The door to hell is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Your grandmother, your grandfather,
your mother, your father have died leaving a hole in your life.
Step through that hole. It is an opening.
That hole is a threshold. That hole is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
From La Pasionaria, Collected Works, Poetry of Clarissa Pinkola Estes**
**Estes also wrote the 1990’s bestseller Women Who Run with Wolves
Awesome. Realizing that every one, every thing, every hurt, every memory is a door. And all are doors with gifts to give, no matter how scary or dark.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting, Eileen. I agree. Perfectly stated.