I Have a Dream

                                                 Joseph's Dream -- Rembrandt

 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt  and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

Matthew 2:13-18 NRSVue

I have a dream
A song to sing
To help me cope
With anything
If you see the wonder
Of a fairy tale
You can take the future
Even if you fail

[Chorus]
I believe in angels
Something good in everything I see
I believe in angels
When I know the time is right for me
I'll cross the stream.

I have a dream -- Abba!

Yesterday's Globe and Mail newspaper had the colour splash photo and headline Going for Gold and most Canadians know that the Olympic men's hockey final is this morning. 

There was another article tucked away in this edition about dreams and it was a good reminder that most of us have a dream life, although it is often submerged. The author, Karen van Kampen is the author of The Brain Never Sleeps: Why We Dream and What It Means for Our Health. Here is an excerpt from the article:

But what about our dreams? Why does it matter that many of us are dream deprived? In this accelerated world where busyness is currency, we don’t stop and think about our dreams, and we’re robbing ourselves of their many benefits. Dreams fuel the body and the mind while we sleep and also into the next day. Instead of dismissing these nightly stories as nonsense, we should prioritize our dream sleep and value our dreams to improve our waking lives.

The dreaming brain is busy at work while we sleep, helping to consolidate memories and strengthen learning. In dreams, we practise new skills and have our own study sessions as we review new information to make memories stick. One idea is that dreams help us remember by connecting recent events with our current catalogue of memories, which gives this new information deeper meaning. “It’s the equivalent to our brain opening all these drawers in our semantic knowledge and our autobiographical memories and going, does it fit in here and here and here?” says Montreal dream researcher Antonio Zadra. “That’s how we build our knowledge of the world. And it does it in a way that we can’t do in wakefulness because we don’t have that neurochemistry when we are awake.”

                                               Jacob's Ladder -- Herrad of Landsberg -- 12thC nun

I found this piece intriguing because we are going through a tumultuous time in our family with illness in body, mind and spirit for several people we love. There have been deaths in our extended family as well. We realize that we're living in a mild and not-so-mild state of apprehension much of the time. Not surprisingly, I suppose, I've experienced several months of the wildest and most unsettling dreams I can recall. They are vivid and sometimes I awaken because of them, although I don't remember them later, for the most part. 

In our Western culture we tend to use the term "dreams" as a metaphor for wishes, or hopes, rather than actual dreams. Yet in many aboriginal cultures dreams are valued and interpreted. Where does Dr King's biblically inspired vision fall into all this? 

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. 

Martin Luther King Jr. 

I wish that I'd done a series of sermons on the dreams of the bible because there are a lot of them. There was Joseph, and Jacob, and anothr Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus. A lot of "Js" here! These weren't just "that was bizarre" dreams. They changed the trajectory of our Judeo/Christian faith 

Decades ago I earnestly started a dream journal and kept it at my bedside. I was inspired by a book by Morton Kelsey but I soon fell off the dream wagon. Maybe I need to revive the practice. For now I'll "dream" of a gold medal for Canada, even though a loss would be a nightmare.