On the 7th of July, in 1456, a retrial of Joan of Arc found her innocent of the charges of heresy. It was twenty-five years after the Maid of Orleans had been tied to a stake and burned alive. Give it another four hundred years and she would be declared a saint.
And. Who she really was and what she believed and what she experienced have been burned to ash with the bonfire.
However.
I read somewhere someone say “Joan of Arc visited me in a dream last night.”
She can do that. She does that.
There was a sort of resurrection. Several. The 7th of July when while a quarter of a century dead, like dead dead, a tribunal officially said she was innocent of any heresy. With that the flesh and blood person became a symbol. A dream. If you will. Actually someone who could visit others in their dreams.
In her case she becomes an icon for a nation. But there’s a lot more. A young woman dreams and new world’s emerge.
I think about how we become dreams. All of us. Some with fire, others with tragedy, others with age or love. All of us become part flesh and part dream.
For me this is the art of our lives. Learning how to dream and then to dream into life.
And with that I think of how we can and sometimes do visit each other in that world which joins us all…
Dreams…
the picture is La vie de Jeanne d’Arc, a detail from the Pantheon in Paris by Jules-Eugene Lenepveu
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