Of dreams and their wisdom

Dear friends,

I am often visited by dreams this time of year.  Perhaps it is the changing light and quality of the air.  Perhaps, the inevitable transitions from summer’s slow, outwardly dream-like pace to the accelerated rhythms of programs, classes, church services, and many reconnections.  I’m inclined to think that this causes our inner life to establish a more fertile landscape for our necessary reveries.

The great Jungian writer Robert Johnson believed (as many dream analysts do) that our dreams are one of “God’s languages.”On these fall nights, God’s language arrives almost in the form of fairy tales.  I find that, even if I can’t find a way “into” a dream immediately the next morning, if I faithfully return to it in the days that follow, I am able to glimpse extraordinary threads, and recognize symbols that contain truths asking me to take hold and make their presence more conscious in my daily life.

I record my dreams in my journal.  Often, I make a drawing that seems to further its action.  These small gestures are a kind of soul care-taking that are accessible to anyone with 10 minutes at the start of their day.  Once we begin to pay attention, our inner life picks up on our heightened focus, and a kind of fertile momentum builds.  (This phenomenon will be very familiar to anyone with a regular prayer practice.)  As the Buddhists remind us, and as Jesus himself taught, we have all that we need — wisdom, Kingdom awareness — within us.  We have only to pay attention.

If we need further encouragement to pay need to our dreams, we have only to consider the remarkably consistent influence of dreams in both the Old and the New Testaments.  Dreams came to Joseph, the father of Jesus, at critical moments.  Another Joseph, far back in time, had learned from the wisdom of his brothers’ jealous betrayal and abandonment, and years of reflection, how to interpret the dreams of others in such a way that an entire people were saved.  Dreams, like angels, are messengers we should never ignore.

One of the Psalms for this week’s readings, Psalm 19, has offered me the language to honor my experience of dream. I hope it speaks to you as well.

One day tells its tale to another,

   and one night imparts knowledge to another.

Although they have no words

   its burning heat —

Their sound, into all lands.

Nothing is hidden,

More desired than gold —

Wisdom.

Your servant, enlightened.

 

If you want to read more about the action of dreams, I recommend:

One more thought, before leaving you this morning:

The reality of OBSTACLES to these inner conversations.

The challenge is to suspend our habits of “operational” thinking, and the pressures that work on us from all directions in a utilitarian society, and settle back into the deep and intensely fertile work of our souls.

My students and I have had fascinating conversations about the obstacles to deep soul work this semester.  For them, the lures and pressures of their cell phones has reached a level of unprecedented anxiety, hijacking their more intentional selves.  Yesterday I read an Op Ed piece in The New York Times that addresses this very crisis, written by Laura McKowen, whose book on entering sobriety (new to me), We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life, was a best seller in 2014.

Food for thought, dreams for the imagination.  Reality invites us from all sides.

Blessings.