Quaker Tina Tau’s extraordinary memoir, Ask For Horses: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life, tells the story of her life by recounting forty of her dreams and then showing how these dreams revealed things about herself and her relationships of which she was unconscious, or which she was trying not to see. The memoir reveals how dreams helped Tau understand and face the challenges of her life and to make the best choices possible. Using beguiling images and stories, they connected her to some wise perspective she calls “Hawkeye,” some part of herself or a divine source that has a wide bird’s-eye view of the past and future of her particular life and also of life itself.

The format of the book, using short sections, is different from any memoir I’ve ever read. In one section she recounts a dream. Next, in a few pages she tells what was happening in her life at the time of the dream. In the following section, she explains what the dream was illuminating about the dynamics in herself and her life that she needed to know. She also savors the mystery, beauty, creativity, and wisdom that reveals itself in the dream. Finally, in sections labeled “Hawkeye,” we receive a few lines or short paragraphs from the point of view of the wise source of guidance that is teaching Tau through her dreams and encouraging her to live as fully as possible.

Tau titles each of her dreams and engages with them in many ways, writing about them, identifying their messages, talking about them with others, taking action based on the insights she gleans, and following the interests they reveal. Her memoir title is the title of a favorite dream that had meaning not only at the time she dreamed it, at age 31, but again and again through her life. “Ask for Horses” is an exquisitely beautiful dream that was a kind of fairy tale. In the dream some Asian peddlers from an earlier time roll out a carpet and display their wares, “semi-spiritual trade goods—charms, salves, mirrors, jewelry.” A skinny young “bird-girl” who is traveling with them sneaks up to Tau from behind and whispers to her, asking her a question that Tau puzzles over in the dream. “Do you think they will give you a gift?”

For Tau, this is the most important moment of the dream. If the question had not been asked, she would not have imagined that a gift would be offered, but since the question was asked, she decides to say, “Yes.” This opens a new potential. The bird-girl tells her to ask for the small herd of horses that the peddlers have tied up nearby. If she asks for horses, they will have to give them. These horses are in danger of in-breeding and if Tina takes them, she can help them.

At the time of the dream, Tau had just entered into a marriage that did not offer what her heart most yearned for. The marriage would last two decades, but right at the beginning this dream showed that she could ask for more in her life. The dream glimmered in her imagination, calling her to entertain something wilder, more alive, and more creative than what she had settled for.

In the section in which she reflects on the lessons of this dream, she tells that she has already begun sharing her dreams with friends. She starts by telling what the dream revealed that she didn’t already consciously know about herself: “I was wildly unaware, at this point in my life, of my tendency to ask for less than I wanted, and in fact not to have any idea what I wanted. Because this problem went so deep, and was so invisible to me, it took a BIG dream to counteract it. Ask for Horses shone a powerful light on my failing. …The dream-makers didn’t need to use a nightmare, because I was listening. And they had something that would reach me better: a fairy tale. Mythical characters, richly drawn paintings, and an ending full of thrilling possibilities. They knew I would hold onto a story like that, lean into it, try to listen up and feel my way forward.”

Tau’s life journey included becoming a mother of adopted daughters, writing three books of poetry, and being a teacher and community member at several schools, including the John Woolman School and Pendle Hill. She served as clerk of Multnomah Meeting in Portland for three years. After training as a spiritual director, she worked with the noted dream teacher Jeremy Taylor and became certified as a dream worker through Jeremy Taylor’s Institute for Projective Dreamwork. Currently she serves on the board of the Portland Grief House and hosts dream circles and workshops there. She also gives talks at international dream conferences.

Jeremy Taylor encouraged Tau to see the evolutionary potential in dreams, and to recognize this at work in her own dreams. She shared with him a dream about catastrophe threatening planet Earth; it involved flooding and other natural disasters. At the end of the dream, Tau is looking as the starry cosmos and witnesses movements and shifts that are “mind-blowing”.

Taylor told her, “It is very good news that you are dreaming about the planetary crisis, because we never dream about problems we can’t do anything about.”

He explained that “The forces of evolution…are aware of the crisis that incomplete human consciousness has created and are working to teach us. They are evolving the collective—especially our capacity for compassion.”

At the end of her memoir, after exploring nearly seventy years of life using forty dreams, Tau lists the thirteen “Big Messages” she has gleaned from her dreams. These messages encourage her—and us—to actively engage in life. They challenge and give reassurance. The big messages insist that, “To face our current crisis, we need to see that everything is in play.”

Several months ago I interviewed Tina Tau. A short video was excerpted from the interview, available below.

The full interview is available at https://vimeo.com/948923137/855f47b895. Jennifer Hogue and Marcelle Martin worked on editing the interview. Cai Quirk (caiquirk.com) is the video editor. The interview and video project received funding from the Obadiah Brown and Sarah Swift Benevolent Fund, and also from the Legacy Fund in New England Yearly Meeting (Quakers). It is part of the Nurturing Worship, Faith & Faithfulness video series which can be found on the Youtube channel of New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) Quakers at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdcV23gXznL2AjbOjgmleHqOyL1bYflRW.

Ask for Horses: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life was published by Kelson Books in 2022. (ISBN: 978-0-9827838-8-7). It can be ordered directly from the publisher HERE. (And also from other booksellers, including (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble. You could ask QuakerBooks to order it for you.).

Tina Tau’s website is at: tinatau.com