I dreamed the other night of a country which stood as a symbol for the whole Universe, a common enough picture. Imagine, if you will the most beautiful landscape you know. Mine might have been the Yorkshire Dales, or maybe the green hills of the borderlands between England and Powys. I was standing in the exact middle of this saucer of natural loveliness, and it stretched to the horizon in each direction.

In front of me was a cage, made of closely crossing metal wires, about 7 feet high by 4 feet wide like a fruit cage, with a small open door facing me. In the outstretched palm of my hand lay a small bedraggled bird.

The story was clear in the image. An accidental opening. A foolhardy bird longing to explore. One does not need details of a narrow escape from a predator, rain and wind, terrors of lightning and of darkness.

The little sparrow lay on its side, panting, its brown, dusty feathers stuck out at angles, its wings were half spread, matted with mud. Tufts of the downy undercoat were missing, exposing wrinkly yellow-spotted skin. Each panicky beat of the heart seemed to press the skin further into my fingertips and suck itself round them.

Too terrified to open its eyes, the bird could not see that it was safe, could not see that it was near home and in the gentle hand of a Preserver. My heart was filled with the greatest tenderness and love, all of my longing at that moment was to reassure and save it from pain. But I could do nothing to calm the sparrow and the increasingly frantic beating of its heart was putting it in real danger of death.

I did the only thing possible. Very gently I laid the tiny creature on a branch within the cage and closed the door. Then I waited, watching over it. The bird rested, its breathing easing as the familiar feel of the twigs and leaves slowly brought it back into calm. It would survive.

I woke in that calm, feeling the familiar pillows and sheets, instantly and completely understanding my dream.

The dreaming ‘I’ was God. The fugitive rescued bird was myself, Elinor. The protective cage was made of the imprisoning senses of my own body; all that keeps us from recognising our place, held within the Hand of God in this beautiful Universe.

The cage keeps only the body within its confines. All the scents, breezes, sunshine, showers, sights and sounds of the Universe permeate the mesh, both coming in and going out freely. The dream message had to cast God as the dreamer, for Elinor, the terrified sparrow, cannot open her eyes and see how safe she is, how precious and how much loved.