There is a reason I keep a journal like this, and it needs some explaining. The deepest inspiration for keeping a journal has come from dreams really. One dream was shared here, but an earlier one (from last May) was this...

I had been given some sort of grant to go back to “the old country”, as in ancient, and do some research. Something about my Italian great grandmother was woven in there, though it may have been more than this too. And I was doing some sort of archeology dig and came across two ancient images. One I can’t remember, i think there were 2 figures in this image but not sure. But this other image I remember. It was of a woman who was painted in the color blue, and on this dig I had realized her “blue-ness” was important...tears, blue, water, something. And then I came across this ancient manuscript of an ancient healer’s somehow preserved and it was about all this seemingly mundane stuff because she wrote in it nearly every day, not just special times but all the time, about this little everyday stuff of healing. And I remember thinking well, this “blueness”, and this “mundaneness” it’s at the heart of healing. And then I realized that was the title of the book that would be written in the dream as a result of this archeology dig.

Reflecting on this later after awakening, i was feeling that healing journal is a way to show that the sacred is here with us in the mundane. That God is speaking when we find that meaningful stone etc, or have that dream or also that little waking dream, or whatever gift or coincidence (a co-in-see-dance is God dancing with us i feel). That if these little daily miracles and processes can be written down (or anchored in some other way) they will be remembered, a personal proof when one has doubt, letting one know that God actually IS here with us, that He hasn’t abandoned us. And that that is at the deepest deepest heart of healing—knowing we aren’t alone, and knowing we are loved. And so how can anyone be a "healer" (and dont we all heal one another, are God's hands for one another?) unless they really know this, know this personally from their own life? How can they give another love and hope if they have not been able to find this in their own life? How can they help someone open up to God’s healing , the source of all healing, if they have not been able to see that God has been there in their own life? You can’t help someone open up to something you yourself have no hope exists.

So this witnessing of God in the mundane day to day business of living and thinking and feeling, this truly embracing one’s tears as part of this too, and this blueness of being able to crystallize those tears too (water becomes snow) it into words or images, this “giving feelings form”, or maybe even somehow finding that primordial heartbeat preserved in the snow (an ice age image), well all of that is part of this healer’s heart i think. And it is a sacred space that this comes from, not the hectic one the world expects. I don’t see this womam in the dream running around all over the place getting burnt out, I see her nourished and in nature a lot and well loved and having a safe and peaceful and sacred sort of life. But I don’t see an ivory tower there. She has compassion i think, does not turn aside when she encounters another’s pain, tries to be a part of the healing there if she can. And does this with herself as well, doesn’t pretend there are not places where she is broken. She knows there is brokenness, but uses this brokenness as an opening instead. Then she can have compassion for another’s brokenness and not run from it or judge it because she has not run from or judged her own.

Anyway, this was one of those turning point sort of dreams. Because what the healer in that dream did by keeping her mundane little healer's journal, her gathering up the meaningful "coincidences", those "coincidences" in her mundane life that showed God IS here with us, is what I love to do too deep down. I love to gather up dreams dreamed at night, and stones on the ground that speak something, and words folks share or things they do at just the right moments, and things that happen in day to day life that you know in your gut were not coincidence but showing there is meaning, a thin golden thread we are given to follow in our lives by these "coincidences" that arent coincidences at all, these signs that say God IS here...well I long to gather all these little things as they happen in life like they are the most precious treasures in the world. Because....they really are. And so after this dream I stopped feeling like this little gathering obsession I had here was meaningless and embraced it instead. Becuase i realize now that even so much as keeping a journal like this is a little way of gathering up dreams and co-in-see-dances and gifts as a way to say...hey, God was here, we arent alone, He speaks to us. ""For He gives to His beloved even in her sleep."

There really are signs made for us in our lives i think, so they can also be looked back on later. Saying to us.... no this wasn't all just random, it has meaning, God is HERE in all this someway somehow, we are not just floundering all alone in our lives. Maybe other folks dont need this. Maybe faith is enough for them. I kind of envy that. But for myself, I need things like this, little signs and "co-in-ci-dances", a thin gold cord I can see weaving in my life, making me feel I am not alone, that He IS here. I truly need that. It's the sort of treasure you can store in your heart, a light to look back on when you come upon a dark night of the soul (and we all will likely have them) when just like Job did, there is a time when you feel abandoned. This gathered treasure helps heal this, because these "coincidences" gathered feel like a neon sign from God saying " 'I was here' in your life...and so I will be again. If I have turned it is just for a moment, its not the breaking of the cord". That's what I see in the rainbow too, that cord. A sign the people living after the flood (and forward) could hold firmly in their hearts as it was a sign of God's connection with them, a promise He would not really turn from them and break the cord, that He loved them.

Anyway, such is the dream of the healer's journal, and the lessons from it. A dream that taught that the mundane acts of dreams and "coincidences" are as precious treasure, like a precious thin gold cord to guide us on...

(Image from Pam Garrison's lovely blog; this image of these rose filled journal pages of hers feels to me like a gathering of true treasure...)