Dreams

Before the pandemic, I had been attending a dream group at the Center for Mindful Living in Chattanooga.  I have always found dreams fascinating, likely an interest first sparked by my mother’s captivation by them.  When I came across a six week course in dream work through Spiritual Directors International, I decided to sign up, despite the fact that this is the same six weeks of Lent.   I hardly need anything else on my plate, but I recognized I missed having that group. And it is rare these days that I do something simply for myself. 

The first session was a reminder of some of the basics about dreams, items I recalled from the Chattanooga dream group.  These basic principles are:  1) There is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning or level of meaning.  2) No dream comes to tell you, the dreamer, what you already know.  3) All dreams come in the service of health and wholeness. We are encouraged to keep a dream journal,  and to record dreams in it in first person, present tense.  We are instructed to give the dream a title and date it. 

I have had some periods of intense, vivid dreaming.  I spent a full year or more after Terry’s heart attack having dreams where he would be present and then he would just fade out.  Alternatively, I would be trying frantically to reach him, usually during a storm.  Those were easily understood to emanate from my anxiety.  Some are less clear.  This week I had a dream where I was nearly paralyzed and only after much effort was I able to speak what I wanted to say.  I have pondered this one.  Where in my life am I feeling that?

There are those who dismiss dreams as random neurons firing or offer some other explanation.  Maybe some of them are.  But the possibilities they offer for exploration are, in my estimation,  one more avenue available to us to learn and develop.  I find that tantalizing.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” of Hope’s Café for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

Hope’s Café Bonus:  In ancient times, people put a lot of stock in dreams.  Rulers often made important decisions based on dreams and their interpretation.  This was the impetus for my book Dream in Progress, a book of meditations based on dreams in the Bible.