Thursday September 16, 2021

Everyone has dreams. So say the medical specialists, who observe our sleep patterns. Rapid eye movement (REM) signals the state of dreaming, even if we can’t remember having had a dream.

            Some of us can remember our dreams. Sometimes.

            A few years ago, I decided to include my dreams in my daily journaling. It’s been an interesting exercise.

            I wake up, for example, clearly recalling two dreams overnight. I sit down at my computer to write about them. By the time I’ve tapped a few notes for the first dream, the other has vanished. Completely.

            Something about nailing down one story banishes the other story into limbo. It won’t come back, no matter how I rack my brain.

            The same might happen, perhaps, if I were to tell someone my dreams. But now that I live alone, I have no one to tell, so I can’t try that experiment.

An extended sequence

            Writing down my dreams has, however, had a practical outcome. I discovered that there’s a flow to my dreams, a progression of themes and contexts.

            For several years, I had dreams in which I had to write an examination. For a course that I hadn’t attended. I didn’t even know the subject. I didn’t know where to go for the exam. The only thing I knew for sure was that I couldn’t  bluff my way through it.

            And sometimes, I was also stark naked.

            I’m told dreams like that are about performance anxiety.

            In another series of dreams, I had to get back to my room, in a hotel or boarding house or retreat centre. Sometimes on a cruise ship. It was not always clear to me why I had to get to my room -- I just had to do it.

            But I couldn’t find my room. It had moved. Or been removed. Or the whole floor had vanished. The cruise ship had erased that entire deck of cabins.

            I felt panicky. Desperate.

            In still another series of dreams, I worked for some large agency or corporation. My boss had given me an assignment. A writing job. Always with one common theme -- I wasn’t getting it done. I felt I must resign, with no other job to go to, rather than continue getting paid for doing nothing.

            Today, as I look at what I’ve just written, I see “FEAR” writ large. But fear of what? Not of those situations, obviously. None of them apply to me in real life.

            Fear of an uncertain future? Fear of letting someone down?

Getting rid of pretence

            Psychologists say that dreams are our sub-consciousness rising to the surface. When we’re awake, we suppress the sub-conscious. We try to be rational, reasonable, practical. Put another way, we pretend to be what we want to be.

            Dreams cut away the pretence.

            They also say that in dreams, we play all the parts ourselves. After all, it’s my dream, not someone else’s.  So I am the bewildered student stumbling into an exam. And the invigilator, glaring accusingly at me. And the student at the next desk, passing me a pencil to write with.

            If so, which is the real me? Or, perhaps, the more-real me. Am I the victim? The critic? The helper?

            Yes.

            To use a biblical analogy, am I my neighbour?

            Yes.

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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Diana Cabott liked last week’s metaphor of temple bells: “After spending quite a bit of time in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand I can attest that waking to the sound of the temple bells is true serenity.”

Tom Watson wrote of the people who refuse to get vaccinated for Covid-19, “They're not listening to the bells in any temple except their own. They cling to their ‘rights’ without any corresponding sense of ‘responsibility’ to the wider community. And yet, they're the ones currently clogging our hospital systems.”

Eduard Hiebert: “Super metaphor that Peter gave! This is the first time I heard that one. Much appreciated!”

Bob Rollwagen: “It all depends on how well the space was built. If the engineers were talented and had the resources, I bet you get a good sound.

            “During a chat with my neighbour today, he revealed that he believed that the Federal Liberals had by far the best plans and goals but he was voting Conservative because he did not like the Liberal leader.” [JT: Something in Bob’s closing sentence didn’t make full sense to me. I hope this is what he intended.] “I am trying to figure out what kind of space someone lives in that would sacrifice a good program for a personal dislike.”

Steve Roney pointed out “a flaw in your analogy of the temple bell. While Gzowski has found an exception, bells in Buddhist temples are usually outside the main building -- where you say it makes a dull chunk. But the actual point of having a temple bell is that it can be heard from a great distance.  The local topography allowing, Buddhist temples are built on hills—so that the sound of the bell is heard from farther away. The idea is the opposite of an echo chamber: the idea is to draw you out of the marketplace, out of your day-to-day way of thinking, to something beyond.

            “Have you been to Athens? The Greeks built their temples on the acropolis. The same is true for Christian churches. A high point is preferred if available. The bells are in the steeple, so that they can be heard from the greatest distance. They would be pointless in the nave -- and unpleasantly loud.

            “All the imagery suggests instead that religion is meant to be the very opposite of an echo chamber. If it has become a matter of merely reinforcing the participants in what they already think, this is the ultimate failure of a religion.”

Sandy Warren: “The idea of bells and resonance is one to hold on to and think about -- it's so widely applicable.

            “Also, I loved the Psalm 19 paraphrase.”

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Psalm paraphrase

This paraphrase of Psalm 1 seems to disagree with the motto of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Do not pursue happiness;
it cannot be captured.

Like a wild bird or a bouncing ball.
it is always just beyond your grasp.

Happiness comes from immersing yourself in God.
Instead of struggling to keep your head above water,
yield yourself to the deep flow of God's universe.

You will not drown.
You will be swept along by forces beyond your imagining.

Foam on the surface gets blown around
driftwood piles up on sandbars
people obsessed with themselves
end up as rotting debris on the rocks
But the current rolls on.

Let yourself get carried away
by something stronger than a social eddy.

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of the web links.

            Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

            I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.

            Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

            I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)