"to reteach a thing its loveliness..."

With the relentlessness and reliability of the tide each night our dreams come...and most nights they challenge us to look at ways we are not in alignment with our soul. They can feel harsh and ego pinching…and they are. They are relentless…and they are reliable. Such is their desire to re-awaken in us our true nature…our beauty and our loveliness.

St. Francis And The Sow by Galway Kinnell

The bud stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch...it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as St. Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, 

and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, 

and the sow began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops 

to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

(Image: Mollie Hosmer-Dillard)

Mary Jo Heyen is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients throughout the country and abroad in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com or  www.thenaturaldream.com