The Journey From There to Here

Damn, my inner critic showed up tonight and is keeping me from my AYWM manifesto. Now, what is it I’m supposed to tell her? Kindly leave? That is NOT working. I believe I have let her engage me and the manifesto will have to wait.

Instead, I’ll tell you a story:

Once upon a time there was a woman who dreamed. She dreamed dreams for herself and she dreamed dreams for her family; and sometimes she dreamed dreams for the world. Her dreams often brought her important messages: go here, don’t let them go there, notice this, danger! Mostly, though, her dreams told her the simple things: here’s where help lies, get stronger before you leave, or, you’re not alone.

One day, the woman dreamed a dream about a mountain. In the dream she was a teacher, in a group of teachers, on top of a mountain with a round stone tower at its peak. The other teachers looked down, but she looked up and above their heads was a man with long dark hair, sitting in the air, circling the tower. He circled the tower two times and stopped with an arm outstretched. Then he opened his hand and out flew a grey hawk, heading south and away. Somehow, the woman in the dream knew that although they had come to teach, they would be learning also.

When the woman told the dream to a trusted friend, he said, “There IS such a mountain by that name – you should travel there.”

She scoffed; how could she drop everything and travel to some faraway place to chase, what? A man flying around a mountain? She looked at a map and knew that the place that called her was even more desolate than the nearby mountain itself. Not only was it very far away, but it was in unfamiliar, empty country, with no place to stay nearby – many miles from a town of any size. She ignored the call.

Months went by; the woman was dealing with her life: children, work, a relationship. She still had dreams. And now, it seemed, visions, too.

She came upstairs one day and there he was, the man, with long white hair now, sitting again, this time in her rocking chair. He was holding a book to his ear with one of those old-timey telephones on the other side – as if to say, “Listen to this book.” Then he was gone. She pulled the book off a nearby shelf and read it straight through with no understanding of what he was trying to tell her.

More time went by, years even, and then he showed up again. This time, she was talking about him with her teacher, frustrated by her own fears of the place and the people who lived there and her frustration at letting her fears keep her from her journey. She closed her eyes and there he was. The teacher encouraged her, “Talk to him,” but all the woman could say was, “Hello,” and then he was gone again.

Now it appeared her journey was inevitable and synchronicity started to work overtime. A man from her youth, from 30 years earlier, contacted her - the man from her past that she had always regretted leaving. As she read the first words of his letter, she knew immediately they would be together. It was as if she could see into the future and knew they would be married. They made plans, they dared to dream a life together, but the distance between them was far, for he lived in the faraway country of the sitting man!

They planned, they hesitated - they each had children and work and there were serious family responsibilities. Finally, the great mystery shouted at her one last time.

She had been travelling and on the trip home, she sat beside an older man and struck up a conversation.  Rusty was interesting to her because he seemed to live a life closer to his ideals, one that she envied. She asked him how he came to live so authentically and he answered her with a story: Rusty had once lived in the big city and worked very hard at a very important job for a big company. One night, he had dreamed of a man, a man with white hair. The white haired man wasn’t pushy, but he kept showing up in Rusty’s dreams and then visions, and finally, somehow, Rusty knew he was meant to travel to see the white haired man.

Rusty travelled very far, staying where he could and asking people if they could help him find the white haired man, and after many, many miles and several turns along the way, he found the man in a little cabin on a muddy dirt road in the same faraway country that was calling the woman, our dreamer.

The white haired man welcomed Rusty and told him simply this:

It’s about Trust

It’s about Faith
Follow the Call
Make no attachment to any certain outcome
Never believe you’re doing it
Seek no return

The white haired man finished speaking. When Rusty asked a question, the white haired man said that was all he needed to tell Rusty, and sent him on his way. Rusty went home to his big city house, sold it, quit his big city job and moved to a little town where he still lives, protecting the land and teaching sobriety to first nations people. He never asks for payment and he is always taken care of.

Imagine our dreamer’s shock. Not only was she being called, but she had been given a path to follow and the old man’s advice as a roadmap. She and her new love made plans to meet again near his birthplace, several miles from the mountain in her dreams and several more from the emptiness that called her.

When the time arrived for them to meet, it was as if no time had passed since their youth. They were immediate kin and within a few days it was clear they were meant to continue in this relationship. They spent a week together, during which time they made promises to each other and started the difficult work of melding their two distinct lives, despite the great distance between them. At the end of the week, they parted and started their long drives to their separate homes.

As our dreamer left the Black Hills, she felt a pull so strong she could no longer ignore it. At a fork in the road, she took the eastern route which led away from her long journey home and into the empty country that called her. She didn’t know what she would find there, but she made a decision, “If I see someone along the way, I’ll ask them for directions.”

The first person she met was a wiry old fellow named Vincent. He needed a ride to the nearest town to pick up gas for his car which was stuck in a muddy field next to the road. Our dreamer talked with him and when she dropped him off at a tiny little post office, she asked, “Can you help me? I’m looking for someone.” Vincent asked, “Who?” 

All our dreamer knew, all she could say, was, “A man in a chair.” This was, indeed, all she had to go on. Vincent replied, “A wheelchair?” Our dreamer had never seen the man with long white hair in any other pose but sitting, and never in a wheelchair, so she told Vincent no. All Vincent could tell her was, “Take that road there – you’ll find what you’re looking for.” Our dreamer suspected it was easier for him to just humor her and send her on her way, but she turned around anyway and headed down “that road there”.

After several more miles a young man appeared, walking in the road. She stopped and asked him if he could help her find someone.  “Who?”  the young man asked. “A man in a chair,” she answered with her now standard reply. “A wheelchair?”  She started to get a sense of this place; something outside of her was at work here. “No, not a wheelchair,” she said. The youth replied, “Well, I don’t know who you’re looking for, but if you head further down this road, you’ll come to a little village, maybe he’s there.”

She continued and soon came to the end of her road, the last stop before she left the country that had been calling her. After this, she would hit a long stretch of road that led her back to their week’s rendezvous in the Black Hills. It was now or never. She turned into “the village”, really just a small group of 10 or so houses together with a school.

She had not gone far, not even to the first house, when she came upon a small group of people walking down the road. Young people, with babies and dogs. Our dreamer stopped driving , turned off the engine and rolled down her window, “I’m looking for someone and I’m wondering if you could help me find him.”

A young woman asked, “What’s his name?” Our dreamer, a little desperate and feeling foolish now,  replied, “I don’t know his name – he’s sitting in a chair.” The customary reply came, “A wheelchair?” “No - maybe,” our dreamer replied.

“Well, how do you know you’re looking for him if you don’t even know his name?” the young woman asked matter-of-factly.

By now, all semblance of common sense and practicality had disappeared, and our dreamer answered honestly, “I had a dream.”

“Oh, you had a dream,” the young woman teased, and then said, “You need to go talk to the medicine man in that house over there. You just missed ceremony, so if he’s not there, you can find his brother, the other medicine man in that other house, over there.”

Our dreamer felt relief. Finally, a clear path she could follow – she headed to the first house, bright blue with a wheelchair ramp out front.

A young man was sitting on the railing. When she got out of the car and approached, asking for the medicine man by name, the young man answered her in a language she’d never heard, she assumed Lakota. Again she asked, and again he responded in Lakota. Finally, a third time, she asked and this time he answered, “Why are you looking for him?”

“That young woman told me I could find the medicine man here,” she said.

“Wrong house, try next door,” was his curt reply. (I must admit, our dreamer laughed at this. She felt immediate connection with these people and their comical ways. And they felt immediate connection with her and her comical questions.)

Around the corner she went, and by now was not surprised to see a second bright blue house with a wheelchair ramp. Up the ramp she went, knocked on the door, and……………………. no answer.

You might suspect by now that our dreamer would not give up and that was the case. After seven years of waiting, she could not be stopped. She drove as close as she could get to the other brother’s house. The weather had been snowy for days and all around the house lay “gumbo” – mud so sloppy and thick that you don’t dare drive on it – when gumbo gets wet, you just have to wait for it to dry out before you can get anywhere in it. So, off she went on foot, mud inches thick hanging off her shoes, to the other brother’s house, about a quarter of a mile off the road. As she got closer to the house, a girl came to the door and our dreamer asked for the other brother by name.

He appeared in the doorway and the first thing he said was, “Are you here to perform the ceremony?”

After all that time, to be welcomed by this!

As you may have guessed, I am the dreamer. And that day, I came home.

It took a little time for us to get there, but a year later, my husband, John, and I moved into the house we have now in the space between the Black Hills and the land where my new family lives. I have a lovely family that I grew up with, brothers whom I love, parents supportive and loving, and that day, standing in the gumbo, I added an entire clan to our family.

Adventure upon adventure, knowing upon knowing, it all comes to us here. And little by little, our dreamer follows the call.

It’s about Trust

It’s about Faith
Follow the Call
Make no attachment to any certain outcome
Never believe you’re doing it
Seek no return