Kieran of Ireland and the Sainthood of Dream History

Detail of a stained glass window depicting Saint Kieran
(St. Brendan's Church, Ireland - Photography by Andreas F. Borchert)

"Kieran of Saighir was the first saint born in Ireland...Before she conceived Kieran in her womb his mother had a dream: as it were a star that fell into her mouth; which dream she related to the magicians and to the knowledgeable ones of the time, and they said to her: “thou wilt bear a son whose fame and whose virtues shall to the world’s latter end be great [i.e. notorious].” Afterwards that holy son Kieran was born..." Life of S. Kieran of Saighir. at Celtic Literature Collective

Strangely familiar to the origin stories for Buddha, I first read about this aspect of Irish history in Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology. Reflecting, I see similarities to Mexico's Virgin de Guadalupe, who was seen in a vision (see also my post: The Imperial Ethereality of the Christian Cross), to incite the mask of christian history over the indigenous face. I wonder, was the story more brutal, covered up by fables of dream and superstition, to align with dominant perspectives on native irrationality.

See related posts: The Mother of Buddha Had A Dream & To Dream Is To Conceive An Other

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In the penthouse suite version of my tiny apartment, I cavort around the fine art, baby grand piano, clear glass tables and impeccable wood floors with my mother. She is youthful and gay, enjoying the space with matchless ardor. As I look into her face, I begin to call out for my wife. “Where is she?” I ask pleadingly. Strangely, the stars shine clearly outside, entering our dimly lit space through the window. We are high above the smog and pollution, high above the human world of earthly obligation.

Cupid and Psyche in the natural bower by Hugh Douglas Hamilton

As I step down, to visit my grandparents in their New York home, I wait, fixed in place within the center of a foyer condensed by the continuous movement of relatives up and down the stairs. The air is heavy. I embrace each family member longingly, and with a strength characteristic of my waking need. Our grandfather is dying.

Interior by William Gerard Barry

Later that night, my wife and I decide to cross a high river. Our kayaks soon tip in the rushing torrent, flooded with murky water. We swim earnestly to the edge, where my wife quits on me as I gather strength enough to submerge in a second-hand craft to retrieve one of our vessels caught in the shoreline brush. Sitting in a sinking vessel, with only a dilapidated, half-worn paddle, a family of ducks begins attacking with an incessant hunger for my pruned, sore fingers.  

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Where am I falling?
Who do I call?
I have fallen, I am getting small.

- excerpt from "I Have Fallen"

Icicle Melts in the Warm Heart of a Loving Dream

It came to her in a Dream…

Listen to “Atlantea” & “Dreaming is all I can do”

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There is a recurring dream-character. She is reminiscent of a Maya girl who I once gifted a jade ring to in her home village in southeastern Mexico, however this dream-character also has very French features and darker, thicker hair braided in a massive pony tail fatter than her spine, looking like it’s exploded with sparks of static electric strands of finer hair in the shadow-cast light. I can’t completely see her face.

There is a great distance between us as she is always cast in shadow. The scene is one of an arranged marriage, however my wife is beside, and who as I reflect now, is to become my second wife in dream! During the night of the marriage, however, I renew feelings of love for my first wife, who is my dream-woman in real life, and abandon the younger girl who is arranged to be married to me on this day.

As my parents leave the scene to run an errand for the wedding services, they tell me about their recent news, where they’ve become billionaires and are buying homes in Newport, RI, which will be sure to benefit me and my new married life. I respond with ghastly sarcasm and they leave indifferent in their swamped lives of money and possessions. I take a car for my wife and I, and we head down the road. We are in a place similar to Connecticut, resembling the industrial surroundings on the highway to New York City.

Next, I find myself singing, as the foreman of a folk band. With guitar in hand, we perform songs on stage in front of a lively sit-down crowd in the dim light of a downtown music venue. This music follows me into the living room of my father’s house.

My stepmother is there alone, cleaning the house by herself. I am in the center of the room, practicing my singing. As she nears, I begin to belt out ever-higher falsetto notes, as my heartbeat intensified and began to shake my whole being in loneliness and stark presence against the mundane vacuity of house-making before me.

As soon as I stopped, she raced a remote control car out into the hall, as I shrunk into one of the rooms, which to my surprise was still made for a small child. I wrapped myself in an undersized knit blanket and while still dreaming, thought that her actions symbolized not growing out of child rearing and only participating in people’s lives through objectified play, an inverted disconnected electronics. 

(The end of the dream juxtaposes with the electronic music reference above, where electronic creativity is central to making intimate connections. The Buddha resides in all things, even your computer!)

Interestingly, my wife’s dream this same night had me also marrying another woman. On the night before we were to be married, the entire family and even she slept together with us in a living room on the floor space. She could hear me arguing with my wife-to-be about. “This is not how it should be, this is not how people love one another,” I would say. She felt the same strong emotions that I felt in my dream in the same night, of longing for true experience with one’s love and feeling a sense of loss at having to watch them become distant. 

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Choose Art

Art is a choice, between perception and dreaming, when both are combined in active creativity.

The residue of dreaming infused with an enlightened consciousness on the positive qualities of becoming increasingly aware of and interacting with dreams as an essential aspect of life, sometimes expresses itself in life as the perception of art as "dreams" within reality.

The Mother of Buddha Had A Dream

Thai Buddhist Art by Anonymous

Twenty-five hundred years ago, nestled in a fertile valley along the border between India and Nepal, a child was born who was to become the Buddha. The stories say that before his birth, his mother, the queen of a small Indian kingdom, had a dream.






A beautiful white elephant offered the queen a lotus flower, and then, entered the side of her body. When sages were asked to interpret the dream, they predicted the queen would give birth to a son destined to become either a great ruler or a holy man.

One day, they said, he would either conquer the world, or become an enlightened being—the Buddha.

from "The Buddha" a PBS documentary by David Grubin