The Dream

I dreamed I took a very young child, not much more than an infant really, to be healed. He was small with dark hair and sitting in a fetal position in a large glass cylinder when I began. Moving him was quite arduous, it required me to carry him sometimes and pull him along in wagons, or other conveyances at others.

We had a long way to go through a labyrinth of big brick houses and apartment houses that wound around and around the world. Normally I would have been terrified of dogs, but this time I knew they would not be a problem. The only problem was whether or not I would give up. I found myself stopping many times to rest, or think about other things, but there was a voice in my head, a female voice I thought might be the child's older sister, or maybe mother, maybe even an aunt, but some sort of female relative, that kept urging me on. I felt I had to be accountable to her.

Finally, in the midst of the most crowded conditions I came to a house surrounded by a wall. This house was flimsier than all the others. It was wood and bamboo, surrounded by a dense garden of tropical plants arranged like a Japanese garden. Slightly run down and very old, it ranged between decrepit and a venerable ancientness. I picked the child up and approached her gate, which was on the opposite side, or east side of the house and she answered.

Holding up the child I asked if she would take him to be healed and she was kind but very firm. She could not, there were too many others before him already. She simply turned away and closed the door.

I started to walk away, the doomed child resting his head against my shoulder when the voice reappeared and began asking me to return, try again. I tried to put it off by saying there was no use, but the voice reminded me that the child would never grow up to walk this earth as the adult he should be, if I did not succeed. I did not want to go back. Just like in my waking life, I feared rejection, but the voice began to sob quietly and say the child's life was at stake.

Finally, giving in, I returned to the woman's compound and knocked again. This time I begged her to please take him, to help him and she took him from my arms, turned around and, once more closed the door. I peeked through the chinks between the sticks of the wall surrounding a part of the compound I'd not noticed before and saw a huge pool of water. It was similar to the wave pools at the new water parks, but this water was completely silent and immobile. It appeared to be very very shallow, only ankle deep, at least where I could see, but people in black swimming trunks and black swimming suits were standing here and there holding children. The children were only in their arms, not in the water, but the people holding them had their heads tucked down close as if adoring them and the children were cuddled in close. It was as if they were being recharged, or fed by some energy connected to these people and the water.

All the people looked alike. In fact they all looked like the woman I gave the child too. I saw her go to the edge of the pool and hand the child to another woman, then turn and walk away and I wondered why she did not do this the first time I asked.