Do SC intro (draft)

Dream of St Clare
Testimony of Filippa di Leonardo de Gliserio, one of the first sisters at San Damiano, during the canonization process:
"Lady Clare also related how once, in a vision, it seemed to her she brought a bowl of hot water to St Francis along with a towel for drying his hands. She was climbing a very high stairway, but was going very quickly, almost as though she were going on level ground. When she reached St Francis, the saint bared his breast and said to Lady Clare: Come, take and drink. After she had sucked it, the saint admonished her to imbibe once again. After she did so what she tasted was so sweet and delightful she could in no way describe it.
After she had imbibed, that nipple or opening of the breast from which the milk came remained between the lips of blessed Clare. After she took what remained in her mouth into her hands, it seemed to her it was gold so clear and bright that everything was seen in it as in a mirror."
Canonisation Process 3, 29 in Early Documents editor Reis J. Armstrong, Paulist Press, NY 1988
Marco Bartoli estimates that the vision took place after the death of Francis, since one of the witnesses recalling it did not enter San Damiano monastery until 1228. If Clare had the vision before Francis' death, she waited until later to tell it to her sisters.
"The water, the stairs, the breast, the milk, the mirror: these are all images which we aften find in the literature of visions and, more generally, in the language of mythology and dreams."
Bartoli, referencing Eric Fromm, The Forgotten Language, NY 1951.
You can read for yourself the interpretation as offered by many 'analysts' of St Clare. Bartoli pp 145-157. This reflection/memoir is not meant to be yet another psychological analysis, but a starting point for my own thoughts. Benedict and Dante and biblical personalities area not the only ones to make use of the same symbols : Iranian myths, extra-biblical Hebrew literature, Hellenistic gnostic thought, the Fathers of the Church… Water, Stairs, Breast are recurring images in spirituality all over the world.
St. Clare's dream becomes a baton passed from one struggling mystic to another; the message resounding through many women (and men, who wrote and were published more) and many cultures, through the ages, right down to an eclectic Christian of the 21st Century: me.