While trekking through the high sage desert, I found Christ trapped in a ruined Church, shattering the stained glass windows, rattling the prison bars, pounding on the door from inside. Chains and shackles of dogma bound his wrists and ankles, more terrible than any nail wounds.
"You, you have the key!" He shouted, "Open the door!" He was pointing frantically at my mouth.
"What key?" I asked.
"Your breath," he replied.
So I breathed through the keyhole of that ancient door until it opened, whereupon Christ became a rare white mother raven with a wingspan that stretched to the far horizons, East and West. She rose into the sky, carrying the moon and all the stars in her beak. She grasped the earth in her talons like a mouse.
Spiraling outward to the end of the ages, then circling back to the present moment, she perched on my shoulder by my left ear and whispered, "You, you are the Christ too, filled with my Holy Spirit." This jolted me so deeply that I woke up, terrified.
"Woe is me!" I cried, "I am a man of unclean lips!" It was early Sunday morning. Quickly, I cleansed myself from the dream, brushed my teeth, and departed for Church to confess the sinful things I had imagined.
Pastel: Alala, sacred raven of Hawaii, by my dear friend Liz Miller.
Parable of Raven Christ
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I read this a couple of weeks ago. Very powerful for me. I appreciate the kind wisdom you share here. I had a dream years ago, many years ago, I was young, walking alone, and all around me the sky was clear except for off in the distance a small flock of birds moving away from me. I said to the universe, I said, I understand there is something, a God, a power, an extremely vast presence to which I am but small. I asked, I said, I understand you are out there, but I wonder about Christ. I wonder if he is real. I asked, I said, just maybe a sign. Out on the distance I saw the small flock of birds, and I asked, 'Okay. If Christ is real, I will close my eyes, turn around, on on the other horizon I will see only one bird." I closed my eyes, turned, and opened my eyes and could see nothing. It was pitch black. I felt something upon my nose, and my eyes adjusted--I was staring into the eyes of Raven, the top of its beak pressed into my nose, and its wing span the vast darkness that had enveloped me. This was years before I read of any idea of universal mythology, archetypes, or, just recently, what you have relayed. Thank you.
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