Another reflection on a dream from Jeremiah

A Reflection for XVI Pentecost (proper  18)             All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. September 8, 2013                                                            Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Jeremiah 18:1-11     Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17       Philemon 1-21         Luke 14:25-33

I warned you last week that I would continue looking for dreams in the lessons. Next month I will begin a series of classes where we will look at 14 dreams in scripture and how God used dreams as the way of communication with people. We will use a book by the Rev. Robert (Bob) Haden, a retired Episcopal Priest, who, after 30 years as a Parish Priest, left to become a full time Pastoral Counselor and Spiritual director using his Jungian training and Christian mystic exposure.

 

In Unopened Letters From God: Using Biblical Dreams To Unlock Nightly Dreams, Bob takes a look at 14 dreams and visions from Scripture, from Jacob’s ladder to Revelation, and invites readers to use the book as a beginning workbook to look at their own dreams. Bob considers dreams to be letters from God that we need to open to find out what the Divine has in mind for us for wholeness and healing. This class will be an opening for people who want to look at their own dreams in a group setting to uncover messages from God in their daily lives.

When examining dreams in such a setting, they are looked at within the context of a group of basic assumptions. Jeremy Taylor offers the following insights from his DreamWork Toolkit

(http://www.jeremytaylor.com/dream_work/dream_work_toolkit/index.html) :

One:    All dreams speak a universal language and come in the service of health and wholeness. There is no such thing as a "bad dream" -- only dreams that sometimes take a dramatically negative form in order to grab our attention.

Two:   Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dream may have. This certainty usually comes in the form of a wordless "aha!" of recognition. This "aha" is a function of memory, and is the only reliable touchstone of dream work.

Three: There is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning. All dreams and dream images are "overdetermined," and have multiple meanings and layers of significance.

Four:  No dreams come just to tell you what you already know. All dreams break new ground and invite you to new understandings and insights.

Five:    When talking to others about their dreams, it is both wise and polite to preface your remarks with words to the effect of "if it were my dream...," and to keep this commentary in the first person as much as possible. This means that even relatively challenging comments can be made in such a way that the dreamer may actually be able to hear and internalize them. It also can become a profound psycho-spiritual discipline -- "walking a mile in your neighbor's moccasins."

Of the 14 dreams and visions, the one we have today in the book of Jeremiah is not in Bob’s book. The first step we must take is to understand what is going on in the dreamer’s life. As I told you last week, everything is falling apart for Jeremiah. The country he loves is being dismantled, the holy places are being ripped apart, and the people of Jerusalem wonder why God seems to have deserted them. It feels as if they are all alone. Jeremiah feels that way especially when he wanders over the ruins of the Temple and when he is tossed into a pit. Part of him wants to give up - and I’ll ask you to stop for a moment and try to remember if there has been any time in your life when you felt discouraged and that there was nothing but emptiness in this religion stuff.   Was there a time when you really understood the words of that old Don McLean song American Pie:

I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most-
the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost-
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
And they were singing

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey in Rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

You got an idea of how it feels to be in that place? Jeremiah wants to just lay his body down and die; get it all over with. He sees no other option. God comes to Jeremiah in his brokenness and speaks to him in dreams and visions, which Jeremiah unpacks and presents to the people. 

In this dream God takes him to a house of a person who fashions pots. Some of you may have seen a potter at work at a potter’s wheel - the wet piece of clay is placed on the center, and as the wheel goes around, the potter guides the clay into the shape of a pot or bowl. There are two things the potter needs to do: (1) keep control of his or her  own hands, as every move is deliberate and gentle as the clay is manipulated to create something new, and (b) the potter needs to know, understand, and respect the clay for it is a partnership in creation. 

I remember in Seminary when I was trying to “throw” a pot on the wheel in one of those vain attempts to get me out of my rational left brain mindset and into the right brain creative view. I would get so upset because I could never keep my hands perfectly aligned, and I wanted to get it over quickly to prove mastery. Except the more I would rush, the whole thing would get out of balance and turn into a mess. My instructor would smile and I would apologize, but he said to me, “Just dampen it down and start over. Messing up is how you learn.”

In the dream, the Potter messes up. Remember, the point of looking at the dream is not to analyze it as an object to be studied, but to form a relationship with the dream and the sender of the dream, I am taking Jeremiah’s dream and making it my own; living into it. If it were my dream, in the dream I hear God saying; “We can start over again and I will help guide your hands. As we work together to shape a new life, a new community, a new relationship.” The potter is gentle and has all the time in the world, for all things are redeemed and the potter knows the clay. The Psalmist for today hears God singing to her in a dream and writes,

1 LORD, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.

2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.

3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O LORD, know it altogether.

4 You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.

The Psalmist’s dream informs me about Jeremiah’s dream, that God knows me and wants what is best for me. In my dream, I would see all of the bad things that were about to happen as part of the labor pains of a new birth. Whenever I louse up in my life - and I do it often - there are consequences for my actions, for there are never actions without consequences. This dream helps me hear that God is constantly working with the lump of clay that I am, and gently, lovingly transforming me into a work of art and useful vessel. I feel God’s hand laying on me, pressing me behind and before, and as God knows and loves me so intimately, so may I also know and love God intimately.

Everybody’s dream is their own, and it has meaning for them.  One of the things we don’t do in dream groups is tell someone that their dream definitely means this or that. What we say is, “If this were my dream, this is what it would mean to me.”  Jeremiah has shared with you a dream he had 2500 years ago. You have heard it. You know what is going on in his life, living in a time when everything seems to be falling apart. This dream may resonate with you. I ask each of you to take a look at this dream and enter into relationship with it, and go through an exercise where you share with God and another human being, “If this were my dream…”