The Red Bird
A person's life purpose is nothing but a slow trek to rediscover,
through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one
or two images in whose presence his heart first opened.
—Albert Camus
Twelve years ago, I saw myself in a dream, walking in autumn twilight, with beautiful red and gold leaves falling all around me. In the dream I was older—about the age I am today. The purpose of my walk was to collect particularly beautiful leaves. For some reason, none that I saw appealed to me, so I just kept walking. After awhile, I saw money sticking out of a pile of leaves. I pulled it out, organized it in a neat pile and left it there. I continued walking until I came to the opening of an underground chamber, with a wide stairway leading down into the earth. As I started down the stairs, a red bird flew over my left shoulder and I followed it into the chamber. I emerged into a large and wondrous room illuminated by an unknown light source. There was a large pool of still water contained within a low wall, perhaps three feet high. From the direction of the ceiling, the most beautiful red and gold leaves that I had ever seen were falling from a source as hidden as the source of the light. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction and told myself—“Ahh… This is where I’ll find my leaves.” I stood next to the pool, and looked down at the top of the low wall and saw these words etched in the stone: HE INTENDS THE LIBERATED TO KNOW LIFE. I awoke from the dream startled.
This has been my life’s most memorable dream. I think of the dream and its images often. Autumn, which was always my favorite season, seems even more significant to me. The September following the dream, I went on long walks when the fall colors came, and took pictures of the foliage, trying to capture the feeling of the dream. When I came across pictures that reminded me of the dream, I saved them and pasted them in a scrapbook. This dream seemed to awaken an interest in the imaginal world and enhanced my ability to read the world symbolically. For some reason, I never tried to interpret the dream because it never seemed right to do so. Perhaps I didn’t want the intellect to intrude on such a soulful experience.
Some people who work with dreams caution against analyzing them (or at least over-analyzing them) because this can reinforce the thinking mind’s compulsion to understand and, therefore, control everything.
In the years since the dream, red birds began to appear at other significant times in my life. Whenever I saw them, or saw a picture of a red bird, I would feel inexplicably sad, but also encouraged—a paradoxical combination. I had a very extraordinary cousin, Nancy, who cared for my dying father during the year before his death. He was living in Ohio and was afflicted with disabling arthritis. A few years later, when Nancy was dying of cancer, she expressed the wish to return to life as a red bird. I was close to another cousin Michael, a deeply spiritual man who lived in California. The last card he sent me before he died had an image of a red bird on the front. Early in my relationship with my wife Anne, a family of cardinals built a nest in the bushes next to the front porch of her home and I often see a red cardinal in her backyard. I don’t think of these red bird sightings as particularly mystical or magical. Rather, I find them reassuring at a visceral level, almost as if someone was watching over me.
So what does all this have to do with affordable housing and the Family Housing Fund? The most striking appearance of the images in this dream occurred in one of the pieces that was submitted for the Family Housing Fund’s Home Sweet Home exhibit, although it took me a while to realize it. After the works had been submitted and exhibited, I felt myself especially drawn to a work by Sandra Menefee Taylor. I guess one might say it was the one that resonated most with me. We had prints made of her piece and several others. I had one of the prints framed and I hung it above my desk at my home, simply because I liked it so much. Months went by and then one day, suddenly I looked up at it and I saw the images of the dream. They were so obvious that I wondered why it took me so long to see them, but I’ll attribute this to the leftbrain static of day to day life. The image, which is depicted partially above and fully on page two, contains leaves and a red bird, but even more importantly, the piece carried the mood of the dream. Because it contained other images as well, it seemed to expand and elaborate the dream in a natural way. The heart images, for example, led me to the notion that home might be understood as a place, a refuge, both literal and figurative, where one can hear the messages of one’s own heart. When I recognized the dream in the print, I felt my work at the Family Housing Fund and our decision to commission art for the 20th anniversary deeply affirmed, as if I had been in the right place for all the time I’ve worked at the Fund—over 23 years. I also felt inspired to continue to explore the connection of work and the life of the soul not only in a private but in a more public way.
During the same year as the dream, 1990, I developed a very unexpected interest in poetry, although the last poems I could remember reading were those I read as high school English assignments. Up to that point, the occasional poem that I read generally left me confused and unmoved. Yet inexplicably, the world of poetry opened to me and I began reading one anthology after another. My interest in dreams and poetry began to shift my perception, and I developed a growing passion for the imaginal world as a refreshing counterbalance to the intellect. I’m coming to understand that psychologists, artists, and poets have as much to offer in addressing social problems as political scientists and economists.
In the words of the poet William Carlos Williams:
—William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, Book I
This essay will explore what I have found lifesaving about a soulful perspective: a wellspring of affirmation, perspective, emotional intelligence, lessons in humility, inspiration, stimulus to the imagination, consolation, comfort, courage and truth that penetrates the denial of postmodern life. In the words of the 13th century poet Rumi—a source of sweetness that always flows and is never less.
Above: Sandra Menefee Taylor, Vessel, House, Garment, (detail), 2000, mixed media, 72 x 32 in.
Download printable version of Soul and Affordable Housing (.pdf format).