Reflection on dreams

A Reflection for XII Pentecost (Proper 14) All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. August 11, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 15:1-6 Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 Luke 12:32-40

From the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew Testament lesson for today: “The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’" Abram lives his life paying close attention to his visions, and the Book of Hebrews lesson for today suggests that this is the way we can enter into faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Today we will be baptizing little Lillian Grace, welcoming her into the fellowship of Christ and inviting her to grow in faith. In scripture one of the ways people grow in faith is to pay attention to their visions and dreams. Our modern problem is that we think faith has to do with creeds and religious observances, but faith is the uniting with God and allowing God to enter our daily lives, hopes, and dreams. At the end of next week I will be starting a course of instruction to better prepare me to help people realize God’s connection to them through the pre-conscious world of dreams. The course is based on Jungian Psychology and deep spiritual exploration. It will last until 2015 and we are using the money set aside for the sabbatical that I should have taken after my sixth year here. There will be 8 weeks of intensive classes at Camp Kanuga in the Mountains of North Carolina spread out over many months and a bunch of books, papers, workshops and consultations. Pat and I will do this together, and we hope to continue to grow in mind and spirit and, as with all Sabbaticals, we hope to enrich the spiritual life of the parish as well.

 

one of the books we will be using

A vision is the dream we share with God and is given to us when we see beyond the surface and go deeper into the world of the ground of our being. Usually we walk around like we have blinders on because our minds are so filled with the detritus of our daily lives - “What does that person think about me?”, “What is the next task I need to do?”, “What am I going to eat?”, “How much more stuff can I get?”, “What show is going on?”, - and on and on, and we miss so much of what is really there. We are so concerned with our own agendas that there is no room for that which is outside our own ego needs and desires. A vision is what God grants us to really see the world as God sees it. 

However, most of us do not want to have visions because they can disrupt our lives, get in the way of our own agendas. There is nothing wrong with that. For instance, last week I was driving back from Oklahoma, going 75 miles an hour on an interstate, and that was not a time I needed to have visions. I needed to focus on what the clown ahead of me was doing and what was going on in my blind spots, etc. But if I live my life as if I am hurtling down a highway, as if my destination is the center of the universe, then I am not aware of the rest of the universe. For our own sanity, spiritual and otherwise, we need to get back in touch with a deeper reality. Jesus, in today’s Gospel lesson, uses the image of  the servant who focuses in on the true meaning of his existence when he  advises "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.”

God comes and knocks, offering visions of the deeper reality all the time, but we are so busy that we refuse to hear. Another reason we refuse to hear is that we have been disappointed with God, and we refuse to put up with anyone who has let us down. I went through that period of sulking over God not doing what I wanted for several years and acted like that old Fats Domino Song:

You went away and left me long time ago
Now you come back knockin' on my do'
I hear you knockin' but you can't come in
I hear you knockin', go back where you been
I begged ya not to go but you said goodbye
Now you come back tellin' all those lies
I hear you knockin' but you can't come in
I hear you knockin', go back where you been
If you had a-listened long time ago
You wouldn't be goin' from do' to do'
I hear you knockin' but you can't come in
I hear you knockin', go back where you been 

 

Fortunately we have to sleep sometimes and what happens there is that, when we dream, we start to listen to the divine knocking and, if we are lucky, we get visions. Sometime we get reactions to the pastrami and rye we ate before we went to bed or the nightmare of the upcoming test in the morning, but as we go deeper, we send our ego, which tries to protect us from God because it doesn’t want anything to change, out for a smoke. In dreams we start to connect back to the ground of our being and hear God speaking to us in order to bring us into wholeness. The dreams are usually in symbols and archetypes to get around our ego defenses and it takes a lot of work to figure out what is being said. Take Abram’s dream in the first lesson for example. “The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield.” 

What is a “shield”? In the 21^st century we would tend to say that a shield is some sort of protection we hide behind to keep us from harm. So if we only stayed on the surface we would say that God is promising to protect Abram from all harm, and Abram can go on with his life undisturbed. Except there are two things wrong with that idea - (1) God does not just visit us to tell us that everything is hunky-dory and then leaves us alone, but God comes to transform us so that we might more fully live and deeply, spiritually participate in the Kingdom of the Heavens right here and right now; and (2) Abram did not live in the 21^st century and the story was not written down in the 21^st Century, so we need to go deeper. For Abram a shield is not something to hide behind but something to increase one’s power. First of all, a shield usually has a decoration, a symbol of you or your family or tribe, saying who you are - like a coat of arms. A Shield was how you defined yourself. God is saying “I am your shield,” and by that he means that “The deeper definition of who you truly are is by your relationship with me. Your life has a center other than yourself for you are my beloved child, the brother of all that has been created.”

Second of all, a shield is not meant to be hidden behind for a shield huge enough to hide behind would be unwieldy. A shield needed to be light enough to carry and strong enough to be of some protection. A larger shield, about 43 inches long, was developed in the early Roman Empire to be used to deflect slings and arrows, but that was more than a thousand years after the Bronze Age of Abram’s time. At that time a shield was either a wood, wicker, metal or animal hide disk that was used on the left arm or left hand, which is the weaker arm or hand if one is right handed, to strengthen that arm and to deflect any blow by turning the shield at an angle so that the sword of the enemy would slide off the shield. No shield, or shield arm, is strong enough to absorb a direct overhead blow, but tilting the shield or using the shield to push away puts the enemy off balance and the energy of the enemy is dissipated. When the vision says that God will be Abram’s shield, God is offering to help overcome Abram’s weaknesses and be Abram’s strength as he deal with the blows, slings, and arrows of life. God is not promising to be the guarantor that nothing bad will happen to Abram, but that God will transform Abram, enabling him to stand and participate more fully in the presence of God. To enter into a deeper relationship with God is to enter into new territory and, as an outward sign of that change, Abram’s name will be changed to Abraham.

God speaks to us in so many different ways, if we would only just stop and pay attention. Last week when we were in Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit Pat’s daughter, son-in law, and grandson (Nate the Great), we had occasion to go on an art crawl through the Brady Art district which is a reclaimed warehouse area. There was some very challenging work in all of the art galleries and studios, but the most meaningful moment was when we walked past a park called the “John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park”. Franklin was a noted author and historian who ended his career teaching history at Duke. He was born and raised in Tulsa and was 6 years old at the time of the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. 

 

The Riots began when a 19 year old African-American bootblack needed to visit the only black restroom in the area located on the 6^th floor of a building, and he entered the elevator operated by a 17 year old white girl. Apparently he tripped and the girl screamed and, in response to her cries, he was arrested for assault and taken to jail. The girl refused to press charges, but an armed Klan inspired mob gathered to take him out to lynch him. The sheriff refused to turn him over, and in the meantime, a group of blacks from the area known as Greenwood armed themselves and went to defend the young man. A battle ensued and both white and black bodies littered the ground. In retaliation the mob grew and marched on Greenwood and burned the place to the ground, beating and killing whoever got in their way. The mob was aided by the National Guard which helped by rounding up 6000 blacks for detention and by dropping incendiary bombs from biplanes on Greenwood, burning the black hospital, churches, schools and every house. Franklin’s father, a lawyer and leader of the Black Community, called the relatives with whom John was visiting and told him and his sister not to take the train back to town. As a result of the riots, the sheriff was fired, the bootblack kicked out of town, Greenwood was razed, and a warehouse district was set up in its place which enriched a man named Brady who was one of the Klan leaders. Money did not purchase his happiness, and Brady later killed himself. Years later the warehouses were empty, and the Brady Street Art District was created. Tulsa tried to erase all memory of the event in its history and put blinders on so that the past could be put behind it and get back to business as usual. The problem is that unless we allow the shadows of ourselves to be brought to light and be transformed by the light of Christ, we tend to unconsciously pass on the repressed part of ourselves. The truism is that “What is not transformed is transmitted.”

Franklin, in one of his books, The Color Line, wrote, “Perhaps the first thing we need to do as a nation and as individual members of society is confront our past and see it for what it is.” Franklin died in 2009 but his foundation, helped by a special commission, the 2001 Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, set aside a section of the old Greenwood area as a Reconciliation park. In the center, next to a labyrinth to walk for contemplation, there is a 25 foot Tower of Reconciliation showing the struggles of Tulsa to deal with the past injustices against the Native-American and African-American parts of our society. It is not a guilt monument, for the vision is the working together to create a just society where the content of character rather than the color of skin define a person. As I stopped I realized that the park was a way to call us to a new vision of the world where, in the words of the baptismal covenant we will recite, together we “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”. The vision, like all visions, is not the wallowing in the past, but a call to change the present and work for a new unexplored future.

Pay attention to the dreams and visions which God provides us to knock on the door of our consciousness, assuring us of the presence of the power greater than ourselves who is our shield as we move into a new future.