Tuesday 23 August 2022
Recalling a dream: something’s deeply connected under Antarctica
I was lifted up from wherever I was and taken in an instant to the South Pole, Antarctica[1]. It’s the middle of winter on this continent, bitter, bitter cold and dark. My viewpoint was high enough that I could see all of the buildings and structures on the base. Despite the darkness, I could see the snow and ice cover with great resolution. The South Pole station/base sits high on the Antarctic plateau, and though it looks flat and ice-swept at first, my eye begins to see the immense terrain or ridges. As I watch more carefully, I see that they’re not ridges but more like a muscular structure disguised as snow and ice. The ice is flexing, and I am pointed toward some sort of opening with a hatch over it. There is someone beside me; at first, I thought it was someone on my team, or another traveler in the dream. I somehow wasn’t cold from the -70° wind, and at the moment I thought “It’s an angel!”, my companion began to flow outward with much more power and light. I was so awed by what I was seeing, what I was doing there, that I didn’t remember to ask, “Are you from the Lord?”
The angel said: “You are to clean and close openings.” I could only see one opening or hatch-like thing below me; in less than an eye-blink, I was at ground level. The opening was a large rectangular sort of frame built directly into the ice and snow. I suddenly had some sort of very long-handled brush in my hands, and as I scrubbed it over the hatch, it became whiter than the snow, and all the edges became completely sealed shut. With the very last brush stroke, I was being lifted up again; I could see the muscular terrain settling, almost relaxing. The angel told me (but somehow not with words), that this was being used as some sort of umbilical connection, and now it was safe again.
Instantly we were transported towards the Antarctic Peninsula, high up on a plateau of ice and snow[i]. Somewhere below us, in what first appeared to be a vast emptiness, was another hatch, another opening, and this one needed to be sealed immediately. But “sealed” wasn’t quite the correct word, it was something more like “extinguished.”
As we approached the snow surface – I had no idea, geographically, where we were – I could see there were odd, jagged rock features sticking up out of this immense terrain of ice and snow[ii], and we were close to one of them[iii]. Suddenly the hatch, or opening, appeared and we stood next to it, a large, flat, rectangular doorway. I had a vision of the name of the doorway, in Spanish: decepción[iv]. There was not a sound or motion anywhere, and I could see my breath condensing into ice crystals. The angel said, “You must seal this with lamb’s blood,” and suddenly there was a small lamb under my left arm. I wasn’t shocked by this because I had a flashing remembrance of going to a pasture with the angel, picking a lamb out of the flock, and returning, all in virtually zero time elapsed.
In my right hand I held a knife, not a fighting knife, but a blade of ceremony. The handle in my grip was wound, almost inlaid, with strong leather thongs. I knew it was leather from a buffalo, and I knew how sharp the blade was because in another zero-time moment, I knew it was my knife, and I had just been sharpening it. I knelt in the snow, which now appeared blueish white, reflecting the darkness of space above, the sky brilliant with stars. There was total silence, so the sound of my knees hitting the snow seemed loud and jarring. Something came out of my mouth in some language that said “In the name of Jesus”, and I sacrificed the lamb. I flipped the knife over in my hand because I knew there were ceremonial brushes on the other end. The brushes were from a powerful animal which I could see but not identify. I dipped into the blood and began to touch it to the edges of the doorway, working my way all around it. At the instant of the last stroke of anointing blood, three things happened simultaneously:
- The doorway, or hatch, which had been made of metal in multiple interconnected segments and edges, became one smooth sheet.
- The very outer edge that I had just brushed with the blood of the Lamb became one with the ice and snow on which it sat.
- The opening changed color to become something translucent white, brighter that the snow on which it lay.
As I rose again above the terrain, high enough to see the entire peninsula below, I could suddenly also see that the doorway I had just sealed forever was the opening to a tunnel, or fissure, or some sort of underground connection. And when I was taken up even a little bit higher, I could see some sort of connected network, one on a straight line to the South Pole, where I had just sealed that doorway, and more to other points around the Antarctic continent. Some of the connections seemed to travel more deeply through the earth towards other continents, but I couldn’t yet see those other endpoints.
I knew the dream was ending and I turned, wanting to see the brilliance of the angel behind me. There was one spoken word: “Vostok[v],” and I found myself awake, breathing in the quiet darkness of 1 or 2 am.
[1] I’ve never been to the South Pole, but I have been to Antarctica twice, to McMurdo Station at the height of the Antarctic “summer”.
[i] in what is called “Palmer Land”.
[ii] These are nunataks, from the Inuit word nunataq
[iii] The Aldebaran Rock (70°50′S 66°41′W) is a particularly conspicuous nunatak of bright red rock, located near the head of Bertram Glacier and 5 miles northeast of Pegasus Mountains in western Palmer Land.
[iv] Disappointment, in English
[v] “Vostok Station” is a Russian research facility, 800 miles from the South Pole
