I dreamed I was back in Michigan in the large bedroom I had grown up in. I had just finished reading a fairy tale with a Jungian analysis and then I started downstairs to my mother's room to get another. There were many more, perhaps dozens, of these intricate, joyous tales and I wanted to get them all.

...A young woman meets me in the downstairs hall and apologetically tells me I must first learn to "read" the Gospel of Silence. She said the delay would be short, however, because I already was no complete stranger to the Gospel of Silence. This makes me feel very happy.

...using it in conjunction with silence gave the whole a surreal loveliness which she knew I, being who I am, would appreciate and understand.

...They were of stone-dark greenish black with sunlight sometimes filtering through frail areas of translucent green rock. They were serene and fresh and only I had ever passed through them. Their stone walls were thick and deep and sheltering and beautiful.

...It was as if "Something" simply jet-propelled me out of there--WHOOSH!--faster and faster, a force blasting me forth. Unfortunately, the sudden speed shocked me into consciousness and I came fully awake.

...reading Jung keeps me fresh and receptive to the unconscious. Still, I must be found by the Gospel of Silence.

Even so, inner silence was necessary. Three years later my emaciated spirit sent out distress signals so desperate even my physical body shared in them, and it was not until then that I took frightened, makeshift steps in an attempt to save myself. I was a daughter of Jairus by then. "The maiden is not dead," Jesus had said, "she is only sleeping." But I might as well have been dead. A spirit like mine had to be immersed in silence before I could be called back to life.

SOURCE: Journey of a Dream Animal by Kathleen Jenks (1975), pp.151-3