An Island in Time
That morning, the dream from which I awoke seduced me in ways they sometimes do – wanting to return to it, dwell in it, learn from it, give back to it. And so I followed.
A map of an island. That’s all I remember now. Except that employing the map for good was my main focus.
I had recently written about Tupaia’s map, a map of a vast Polynesian geographic area of islands that spans Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. The main purpose of Tupaia’s map seemed to be sea faring, to locate the islands in relation to one another, illustrate their distance from one another, and assist travel between one and another.
In this dream, I was given the map of one island. I could see only part of the coast but knew at the body level, far more deeply than simply with my head, this was an island. And that, in itself, had meaning to offer me. But what meaning?
I awoke. As is our custom, my life partner and I checked in. “How did you sleep?” “Any dreams?” My dreams are often snippets, often with a limited narrative line of me attempting to serve in some way. Yet, in this dream, I was not witnessed as much as witnessing. There was no view of me in the dream, only me viewing. Viewing the map. The map of that island. And only a portion of it. And seeing, no, knowing intuitively some part which I could not see with my eyes.
As I remembered it aloud, I wrestled with it. Then, the words arose in me, “This is an island in time.”
What does this map have to tell me?
To tell us?
What will our answer be to that telling?
Today, during this time of COVID-19, Philadelphia remains quiet going into the 4th week of business closures. Experts now predict our city will be the next epicenter of the virus in the U.S..
The young man at the bank, yesterday, said he was employed by Paris Bistro up the street. They brought staff in to do a deep cleaning and laid them off that same night. He is among the several millions now unemployed, a time like none since the Great Depression. He hadn’t read the sign saying “one customer at a time in the vestibule.” He simply wanted to cash his check which took three weeks to arrive. “Unemployment doesn’t pay what I earned. But I don’t want to endanger my life…” His beautiful Black face came to the foreground for me then, as my mind recalled all those social media postings about racial and class disparities in infections and deaths. Not really different from other times but somehow disturbing me more.
I talked with him through the cloth mask made for me by a dear friend, blue to match my eyes, delivered to my apartment bedroom window the day before. As a part-time employee of a small non-profit while I cultivate a coaching practice, I’ve been working from home. I receive work mail weekly through that same bedroom window, delivered by my colleague’s wife as she goes on her fitness walk. With my partner conducting certified distance counseling from our apartment living room, the bedroom window is the most ready access to the outside. We are protected in innumerably more ways than the man in the vestibule at the bank.
And today is the first day of Passover in a time of the COVID-19 plague. There will be no weekly work mail delivery today. Yet, the Norway maple blooms 
chartreuse against a sky unstreaked by jet trails. The sparrows’ chirps from the hedgerow can be heard with silent streets traveled mostly by UPS, FedEx, or postal service trucks. We listen for our neighbors’ cries in ways we don’t in other times. And I talk with a young man in the bank vestibule about livelihood, life, and death.
This is an island in time. How will we live in it? What choices will we make here? Will they course correct? For now? When this time passes? IF this time passes before we do?
- Can you hear your life calling in the quiet of this time?
- In what ways can you free yourself and let go of a “play-not-to-lose” approach? Whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually, to open to this “one wild and precious life”?
- What are some “safe-to-fail” experiments that you can run while on this island of time?
