Can you nurture the children of your actions?
~Miller & Lee, in Plan B

In this dream there is a great party in my honor. It is my baby shower; I feel my swollen belly, warm with new life as I look through the heavy curtains of the sound booth over the packed auditorium. The stage is brightly lit, empty, its forward curtains open. I seize a microphone, the techs around me showing faces concerned that I might flub a line with nervousness. In a hearty, full voice, I welcome one and all and thank them for coming.

What I remember next is tossing and turning in a bed in the dream, tired, so very tired, in desperate need of more sleep. But I know that outside this room all my assembled guests have been waiting, expecting. They came for a party, and there was nothing prepared for them. No music, no games, no entertainers, no food or drink. They have been expecting me, but I am so tired. Groaning with the effort and filled with shame at my weakness, that let me disappoint them so, I haul myself out of bed and dash into the dining room. I know that the throng of celebrants were to have been seated there, but it has been a long time--hours?--since I vanished.

When I arrive in the dining room, I see long tables covered with white cloth, long rows of empty chairs. Not a candle or a piece of silverware or anything else is on the tables, and where earlier there had been a packed house, I see at the near end of the table a mere handful of stubborn, tough older women. I sit myself among them, my heart heavy, and place my head in my hands. I apologize.

There is conversation I don't recall clearly, but it seems important. Someone comforts, perhaps; someone offers advice. I make some kind of effort, and food at least, at last, arrives. It's too little, and stale. Each is item wrapped in foiled paper that's been wrapped around it too long and has either stuck to the food inside or broken open. I pick one up and unwrap it. Some kind of messy, spicy sandwich, lukewarm from its long journey. I taste one experimentally--too spicy, too much bread.

One of the ladies says something then which offends me. Command, derisive comment on the food, obvious observation about events already transpired? Something insulting. I lose my temper and make an impassioned little speech which I don't recall, but which ends, "now you owe me one!"

End of dream.

So I know that right now I biologically cannot be pregnant. At a certain time of the month, which propitiously arrived a couple days after Dave's visit, makes me very sure of this. Which means this dream is about a spiritual pregnancy, not a literal one--about the children of my actions and my intent, not the children of my body.

Lots of earth and air, not enough water and fire. I mean by this, a grand place in which allies may assemble, and a great name to bring them there, but nothing to sustain the flow of interaction, and no purpose to move them towards a commonly held goal. Magic in the right amounts but the wrong proportions.

And in trying to fill the lack from myself, I exhaust myself.

It's a puzzle, though, how to fix it.

Lacks in air and earth, I understand these. I think of them as vertical-draw elements. Your relationship with the physical, material world is earth, down. You draw more power through conscientiousness, reliability, steadfastness. Your relationship with the intellectual world, the perception and understanding of what's around you, and your understanding of how your perceptions are framed, how your judgments are made, as well.

Lacks in water and fire are harder for me. Horizontal draw.

Fire, what burns in the spiritual space "behind" you and drives you forward, is your motivation, your passion, the power of your will. Willpower, too, though, comes from somewhere. Even though it's central to the self, it, too, rises from relationships. Your fire rises, I think, out of your religion in the special sense. What is sacred to you, where your innocence and wonder come home to roost. The strength of your commitment to these things, and how much of yourself you pour into their service, is the measure of how strong your fire is.

Water, what draws you onward and discovers, by its movement, the shape of the space and time within which you move.

I still have a lot to learn in that department. I'm starting to get the hang of the basics, but it's slow going.