Wine Poured Out

Fifteen years ago today I stood in a field in Malta, balancing my weight precariously as it was freshly plowed and the turned up ground was soft and unstable beneath my feet. The field was surrounded by limestone walls. I was with two others, people I’d asked to witness and participate in that moment.

Several months prior I’d had a dream in which I met Jesus at a banqueting table. I ended up seated across from him, but with my head bowed in submission, unable to look him in the eye. But somehow, without words, I knew to cup my hands out in front of me, across the center of the table. He took a decanter of red wine, and poured that wine out into my cupped hands, until it spilled out onto the snowy white table linens. And then I woke up.

I wondered what that dream was about, curious, but not worried. More surprised than anything, because while I often had spiritually toned dreams, this was was more vividly real than anything I’d dreamed before, and, well, I met Jesus in it. Later that day I was listening to a sermon podcast as I walked home from the train station after work, and found myself wondering again about the wine. I rarely drank the stuff, I was from a church that used grape juice for communion, and very few around me at the time imbibed either. Suddenly the words of the preacher penetrated my musings – “wine,” he said, “is about the shalom of God, the healing of God, the wholeness of God.” I remember pausing on the corner of a major intersection, waiting for the light to turn, and asking Jesus, “Did you just pour your shalom, your healing, your wholeness on my hands in a dream?” I didn’t get an answer.

I later shared that dream with a few people in my life, and then set it aside. Until, that is, I found myself in Malta, a place that had been introduced to me as a place with a history of healing tracing back to St. Paul shaking the viper off into the fire and not falling ill, and then carrying Christ’s healing power to the Maltese people. During the trip we’d visited the spot where St. Paul was supposed to have made landfall, and St. Paul’s shipwreck church, which housed two relics of the saint – a piece of the column on which he was beheaded in Rome, and a portion of his wrist bone in a creepy looking silver reliquary.

Something about that time was stirring images of the dream again, and I communicated to one of the people I was there with, that this was happening. I said that I thought I needed to see it played out in real life. She questioned me a little, then helped me make it happen.

And so, there I was, standing in a field of dark dirt, cupping my hands. The two who were with me filled my hands with the rich, dark soil, and some wildflowers, and then began pouring wine over them, washing them clean with the blood red liquid.

It’s been fifteen years since that moment. A moment that ended up being the beginning of a shattering in me, in the relationships of the people with whom I was travelling and praying and serving. A day that was the first of a series of four days, that were traumatic to live, and sad to remember.

It’s been fifteen years, and still I wonder about that moment. I wonder about that dream. I’ve had undeniable moments where my hands have been used in healing, where my hands and by extension the rest of my body, have contributed to bringing shalom, peace, healing and wholeness. I’ve experienced shattering of my own self, moments where I was certain that I’d never again know peace. And I’ve experienced the healing brought by the hands and feet and voices of others.

Fifteen years later and I still rarely drink alcohol, including wine. But also, fifteen years more whole, more experienced – fifteen years further into a life where I really do hope my presence brings with it some form of shalom. I still don’t know what to make of it – what to make of the dream or the shattering, or the healing. I don’t know how to express the trauma, the brokenness, the years that followed, the way that trauma has shaped me into who I am today. But today, I’m pausing to remember it, to remember the impact of Christ’s touch on my hands in that dream, to remember the unstable ground beneath my feet, the scent of the wine mixed with soil. I’m holding it in front of Jesus again, and asking anew, “what does it mean that you blessed me with wine poured out over my hands?”