A Woman of Substance

God has spoken once, twice have I heard this:  That power belongs to God.  Psalm 62:11
Commit (literally roll) your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established.  Proverbs 16:3
One sows and another reaps John 4:37
"Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops." Matt 10:27
By your patience, possess your souls..." Luke 21:19

June 2, 2005
What is 'Abraham's tent' for me?  What is my prophetic life, and how am I to live it out?

June 6
He thinks truth is a philosophy that clarifies relationships.  How do we turn his eyes to see that Truth is a relationship that clarifies philosophies? (Spoken as a prayer preface for the sake of a friend whose heart carried questions.)

The old journal is soon to take a turn like a river whose course meanders a new direction.
Soon, dreams will come and be recorded as strange things--in part unnatural.  Then imagery will rise to a larger context, a purpose revealed in life and scripture .  Thus a sort of dance will happen.  For now, in the journal it is but a swaying...a swaying to the rhythms of verses like those above as they began to hum for me years ago.  But soon the pull of that rhythm, the inviting hand of the divine Partner will draw my feet to the dance floor, and the steps are all recorded there...and soon enough here as well.  For today I will tell of but one dream. 

In this dream, I lay on the ground, and a woman moved--or more nearly floated--down the length of my body, and her hair trailed above her head rather than hanging down about her shoulders.  Her hair followed her, running the length of my naked flesh, and each lock was like a tiny winding stream of gold. The "good" feeling that accompanied those streaming locks as they caressed me was as an echo of the goodness of the dream of the Bride of Christ--which will be recorded here a few days hence. 

The reason I tell this dream now is because this one, even though I dreamed it somewhere back in 2005-2006, found its "meaning" this very day.  I've read before that a covenant dream's significance can often be gauged by the length of time required for its realization.  This dream knew about a seven year gap between the giving and the start of its defining.  To share that definition, I must first describe something that happened yesterday. 

When I went to the drop-in center where I serve breakfast to homeless teens once a week, I took the young staff woman who has been my closest associate there aside and told her I needed to step back from my Tuesday morning role.  Only now has the Center completely fleshed out this volunteer position of "house mom" which is a role I've covered since it first appeared last October.  The center's hope now is to make that role more of a supervisory one so that staff members can focus on relationship-building with the youth. A need for crowd control prompts the change now as the number of youth is burgeoning, and while I see the value in that change, I also know it is not a role I can fill.  They want a commander/enforcer to make the youth learn self-care skills and to share in the communal burden.  But, I am not a commander, and no matter how much I see the benefit of having one, I can't be that person.
I asked God to give me language. "Who am I then?"
He said.  "There is a reason wisdom is personified in Proverbs as a woman.  You are designed to personify her.  And she is an inviter." 
I have been called a prophet and a teacher by those around me, and so it has been.  But passing this timing-test ushered me into a new naming--the calling to Wisdom.
And suddenly, I just knew who she was in my dream, the woman with the rivers of gold growing out of her head, and so a question that has swirled in the back of my mind since the time of the dream was answered.
God has spoken once.  Twice have I heard...
My works have indeed rolled onto You, and my thoughts are indeed established...
And when I sowed and left the field, knowing another will reap and this is not a condemnation--
--as I patiently waited,
I came to that place of possessing my soul.

Today I can finally attach this dream to a verse:
Say unto wisdom, Thou [art] my sister; and call understanding [thy] kinswoman:
 Proverbs 7:4