For how poorly and rarely I sleep I have a surprisingly dynamic dream life. Yesterday I woke up disturbed and burdened by a particularly ominous dream which started innocently enough with my sitting leaned up against a building with a woman who looked like Kim Cattrall. Kim C. is commanding/confident/liberated/opinionated/loyal. I’m still not sure who she was supposed to be in my dream — maybe a goal version of myself?
So I’m sitting there, in repose, facing a swimming pool on a beautiful day when crows start diving and circling around us. After one not so much pecks as rams my left temple with its beak I stand up and walk to the right towards a field, meanwhile swatting at the attackers with a small clutch. Now facing my original seat, a crow is attached to the top of my hand, biting the skin beneath my thumb joint with such force I can’t even whack the malicious thing off of me. Somehow he finally falls away but the locked beak is left pinching my skin. Kim C. flicks it off and there remains a slender rectangle of exposed flesh, not bleeding, not not bleeding, just raw and defined.
She wants me to find my phone before she’ll let me get in line at the emergency room but I force my way out of the car and announce to triage that I’ve been bit by a crow. Everyone backs away, the attending’s eyes expand to double their size, and with his head down he tells me they might not be able to help at all. He asked the severity of my pain then put his head back down, explaining that the antipoison can only be administered if pain is considered severe – the implication being that less severe pain warrants no treatment, even though no treatment invites death.
I regularly dream about unpleasant, sometimes terrifying and fatal situations that find me waking up anxious and frustrated, but never in a state of concern like that in which I found myself yesterday. Crows mean death, everyone knows that, haven’t you seen Sons of Anarchy?
After furious googling (obviously) I learned that some cultures view crows as symbols of wisdom or icons of change, and that specific behavior like a crow biting you “signifies anger towards someone that cannot be shown in waking state.” Here’s the hiccup: while I have spent much of my life angry at various people – usually family – for various reasons, right now, I don’t feel anger towards anyone. In fact, after last month’s hospital stint for my husband’s cancer scare I feel less angry than I ever remember feeling in my entire life.
I firmly believe in the revelatory power of one’s subconscious, but what’s uniquely clear to me now is how our subconscious can teach us even when things seem lighter and more “right” than ever before. Peacemaking goes beyond forgiveness. It seems my soul remembers that even when my mind has found other vocation.
I use the term Holy Spirit because it is what resonates with and makes sense to me, but regardless of preferred language it is absolutely wild to realize the instructive, intimate power of that which works within us. What a tremendous opportunity if we remain open to it.