Center of the Labyrinth

A Reflection for VIII Pentecost                                             All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC August 3, 2014                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 32:22-31        Psalm 17: 1-7, 16        Romans 9:1-5              Matthew 14:13-21

The Center of the Labyrinth

video of the sermon is on You Tube:  http://youtu.be/PxysrFQeAj4 

This is the last of the four part series we are having about the hero's journey of Jacob. Let me use another metaphor in order to shed light on what happens in the archetype of the “Hero’s Journey”, a life-long journey of living into who we were created to be. I call your attention to the labyrinth that is in the grove on the other side of the parking lot. The Labyrinth is an ancient symbol of life’s journey from mere existence to meaning. One enters the labyrinth with prayer, as we remember the words of our Lord who, in The Message translation, said, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” For those of you who love the old translation, it goes, “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
In the Labyrinth we walk prayerfully one step at a time, through many twists and turns, being aware of the many burdens we carry with us, until we reach the center. There we remember who we were created to be and stand alone before God. We make the decision to leave the garbage of the past and, offering prayers for guidance, we walk slowly and prayerfully along the same path out of the labyrinth and into the beginnings of a new way of living. In today’s lesson Jacob has come to the center of his labyrinth and comes face to face with God.
In the first of our reflections on the meaning of Jacob's hero journey, we met him at his birth holding on to the heel of his older twin, Esau.  We followed him through the trickster persona he adopted as he schemed, cheated, and lied his way through life and, as a consequence, he broke his father's heart, caused grief to his mother, and made a sworn enemy out of his brother. His burdens are getting heavier.
In the second reflection, we are with him as he has to flee from his home to find shelter with his uncle, Laban, and Laban's two daughters, and as he is on his way, he enters a dream where he encounters God who promises to be with Jacob.  Jacob says a version of “R-I-I-I-I-G-H-T” and builds a monument of  stone and goes on his way, still carrying heavy burdens in his soul. Yet, there is something that remains deep inside him, an awareness that this God has gotten under his skin.

In the third reflection, we are with him as he gets to Laban's tents where he and Laban play a series of manipulative schemes on each other, for they are both from the shallow end of the gene pool. But that awareness of God, always in the back ground, comes more into the conscious mind when he is able to “fall in love”, getting tangentially in touch with his deeply hidden soul. He ends up marrying both of Laban's daughters, but he is moving slowly toward the center.

In the meantime since last week’s lesson, he is able to break from Laban's yoke and escape to begin a new free life. Laban catches up with him and they are able to form a spiritual peace as they agree to no longer be enemies. They make a pledge invoking Jacob's God and Laban's God, and they vow as they build a heap of stones, which is a reminder to Jacob of the stone he erected when he had the dream in which God told him that the God of his father and grandfather would stand beside him. The vow is a variation of the “trust but verify” concept:

Laban said, “This monument of stones will be a witness, beginning now, between you and me.” (That’s why it is called Galeed—Witness Monument. It is also called Mizpah (Watchtower) because Laban said, “God keep watch between you and me when we are out of each other’s sight. If you mistreat my daughters or take other wives when there’s no one around to see you, God will see you and stand witness between us.”)

Jacob continues to go deeper into his soul, and the awareness of the presence of God grows. Right now Jacob is about 40 years old, he has two wives, two concubines, plenty of sons, and has gotten rich by all his cleverness, but there is emptiness with all he has achieved. Jung says that people's lives are divided into two parts - the first half of life is dedicated to getting ego needs met, the “what's in it for me?” stage of life. In the second half of life, we start to look for meaning and go deeper into ourselves as we know that we are becoming the ones who can begin to see the approach to the gateway of death. However, Jacob gets word that the gateway may be closer than he thought, as he hears that his brother Esau is coming after him with over 400 men and will be there the next day.

Rembrandt's vision of Jacob and Angel

He divides his company into two units so that maybe there will something left after Esau chases one or the other. That night he is alone by the ford of the Jabbok river and he enters a dream. Many think that a dream is like a movie or play acted out in your head. But, the Biblical understanding was that a dream is not something you watch, but is instead a sacred space that you enter and encounter parts of yourself, your soul, and the soul of the divine. Dreams are ontological encounters with the depth of our being. One does not “have” a dream like a possession, or an experience, or an idea we can totally comprehend, rather one moves into a different dimension of space and time. In the dream we encounter mysterious symbols that meet us in our soul. Just as we do not “have” souls, we are souls, and in the same way, we do not “have” dreams, we are dreams of God. Soul Work is not about learning theology, or doing more good deeds, but it is the living into the dream of God. This dream that Jacob is experiencing is a nightmare as Jacob, the “I person” in the dream, wrestles with his demons and with his God. Nightmares are not meant to scare us but to call our attention to something we have long ignored. This nightmare has a physical component in which the nocturnal thrashing is so violent that Jacob's hip is thrown out of joint in the reality of the dream, and the wound holds over in his waking life so that he can no longer run away

God meets us where we are and takes us into different dimensions on our spiritual journey. We can see how God does that in the Gospel lesson for today from Matthew. The miracle of the loaves and fishes is not a matter of sleight of hand, a magician's trick, or even an impromptu covered dish supper. I understand miracles, the same way I understand dreams. God takes us into a different dimension, where time, space, and laws of physics collapse in on each other,  where the narrowness of our concepts of what we know are exploded and we are encountering God, that which is beyond our ability to comprehend.   I tend to follow St. Augustine who wrote, "Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God."

Sir Jacob Epstein 's  vision

The nightmare ends with Jacob embracing the symbol of God which Jacob's dream gives him, and he will not let go until he is blessed. I once saw a sculpture of Jacob wresting with the angel, and the bodies were so entwined that I could not tell if they were wrestling for control or if they were embracing as if they were making love; which was it? The answer of course is “yes”. To struggle with God is to make love with God, to be vulnerable enough to hold on, hold on for the blessing while those false options we chose to replace our original blessing, dream, and birthright from God are reduced to shadows.  Jacob has arrived at the center of his labyrinthine journey for meaning in his life, and now he must move toward the end of his journey.

Jacob begins his life by wrestling with his brother in the womb, and he arrives at the center of his labyrinth journey with God by wrestling with God in God's womb. It is this encounter with God that allows Jacob to cross the ford of the Jabbok and walk painfully with a limp, vulnerable before his enemy and brother, Esau, armed only with the strength of God’s love.  He allows himself to be embraced as the family of brothers become whole. The story ends with hope, and God knows we all need hope.

The journey for Jacob will continue, for there are many labyrinths through which to walk. “We have to walk them by ourselves; nobody else can walk it for you . . .”.   That line sound familiar to you? It is an old Gospel song, at least 100 years old, called Lonesome Valley, which has been sung by so many people from Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez in folk version to George Jones, Johnny Cash and  Elvis Presley in country, to Mississippi John Hurt in Blues, and it reflects the archetype of the Hero’s journey. Let me close with the lyrics as modified by Woody Guthrie:

You gotta walk that lonesome valley,
You gotta walk it by yourself,
Nobody here can walk it for you,
You gotta walk it by yourself.

Some people say that John was a Baptist,
Some folks say he was a Jew,
But your holy scripture tells you
That he was a preacher too. 

Daniel was a Bible hero,
Was a prophet brave and true,
In a den of hungry lions
Proved what faith can do for you.

There's a road that leads to glory
Through a valley far away,
Nobody else can walk it for you,
They can only point the way.

Mamma and daddy loves you dearly,
Sister does and brother, too,
They may beg you to go with them,
But they cannot go for you.

I'm gonna walk that lonesome valley,
I'm gonna walk it by myself,
Don't want to nobody to walk it for me,
I'm gonna walk it by myself.

Reflection on Bob Betz

A Reflection on the Occasion of a Memorial Service for Robert W. Betz Jr    All Saints Church  July 26, 2014                                                                                                      Thomas Wilson

Wisdom 3:1-5,9       Revelation 21:2-7    John 14:1-6

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew “5:14-16)

On the front of the bulletin there are the verses that BJ wanted used in the service. They are from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The editor of the Gospel Book named Matthew wanted to crystallize the teachings of Jesus. The editor is working 40 years after Jesus' death and there are so many things that Jesus said and so many things that people remembered Jesus saying and things that he had done. There was a mountain of memories and as the last living witnesses to those events started to die out, the community in which the editor of Mathew belonged, as did the editors for the communities of Mark, Luke and John, felt they needed to pick and choose from all the stuff on what was really important to pass on to future generation. Matthew does not remember any sayings about church structure, or rules, or attendance, or architecture, or vestments, or hymns, or which translations to use, or points of theology, or questions of the interface between religion and science, or homosexuality or all the things that churches like to fight about. Matthew's editor writes down the things that are important; which is how we live our lives.

These things are the core of Jesus ministry: (1) we live in a very broken world which we cannot control but don't be afraid for love is what makes living worthwhile and, (2) life on this earth is so short and our kindness and forgiveness needs to be shared before we run out of time, (3) God has a greater imagination than we do and we are called to enter into that imagination where time and space are given different dimensions in how we are connected to each other..

Most of you know that we are not here to give Bob a Sunday school perfect attendance medal. He did not carry his faith on his sleeve but in his heart. He attended church regularly growing up and in his life with BJ but when he moved to the Outer Banks and Sundays were filled with Tennis lessons; he came to the idea that people were more important than theology. He still had an awe and reverence for God but he was more of, to use the idea put forward by Karl Rahner, a theologian of Vatican II, an “anonymous Christian”, the kind that, to use Steven Clinton's interpretation, "existentially is committed to those values which for the Christian are concretized in God."

When I heard of Bob's emergency visit by ambulance and later transfer to the Norfolk Hospital I was ticked off with God. My first thought was that just was not fair; Bob is too good a person to have his body let him down like that, and his body had no business letting him down since he was in such good shape- which is based on the misconceptions that life is a contract in which we get what we deserve in this life, the “you do good and life is good to you”. It didn't help when I visited him in the hospital and the Doctors could do nothing. I moved from being ticked with God and Bob's body and transferred it to the medical profession and thought, “How could we spend so much money and trust in the medical profession if they cannot deliver on keeping us safe from death?” I did not like the undergirding of the first of the core of Jesus' teaching: “we live in a very broken world which we cannot control.”

Jesus came to show us God's love, but he specifically did not control that bad things happen to good people. In this world, as part of the human condition into which we are thrown, we have limited power to keep all bad things from happening; we are all vulnerable. Being vulnerable means that we can be afraid of earthly death but that is part of being human; death is part of being human, but fear does not need to be. The phrase most used throughout scripture is “Don't be afraid”; from the announcement of Jesus' birth to the resurrection, the angel message is “Don't be afraid.”

In the Gospel lesson the disciples face the thought of Jesus impending death with fear and Jesus says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me” The Greek word for “believe” is “pisteuo” which is not a passive intellectual belief in a fact such as “Reykjavík is the capital of Iceland”, which is a nice thing to know if you are on Jeopardy, but what does it have to do with our daily life on these Outer Banks. “Pisteuo” would be better translated as an active living verb of “I put my trust in, I hold on to” where it does make a difference.  As the Psalms for today, the 23^rd and the 121^st, remind us; we are all walking through the shadow, but God is with us to give us strength. All we can do is use the love which God makes available to us to redeem the bad things that do happen. At the end of our lives it will not be the stuff we think is important, don’t misunderstand me they are, but the money we made, the jobs we had, the awards we received and the games of tennis we won that define our lives are less important than the love that we give and the love that we receive that qualifies as a life worth living and by that definition Bob's life was abundant in his love and being loved.

The second core of Jesus' teaching, “life on this earth is so short and our kindness and forgiveness needs to be shared before we run out of time” was about how we treat others. Matthew crams all of Jesus’ ministry into a three year cycle so that we might be reminded that life was indeed short to do what is important in life. Bob is younger than I am and had less time on this earth, but from the stories that I have heard in the community and even in my own household as Pat related repeated kindnesses given by Bob. I remember how I used to keep inviting BJ to stay longer for the coffee hour and she would say; “I need to get home to Bob.” It was not a sign of compulsion on her part for she did not “need to” but she wanted to because she knew at the core of her being that life is too short and he was the kind of person with whom she wanted to spend her time. Bob also did not waste his time for he was promiscuous in forgiving, generous in kindness and faithful in loving; we just wish that we could have received more kindness and forgiveness. We need all the lights of the world, like Bob was.

Our third core is about joining into God’s imagination about how connected we are which is about living into a soul filled life, where the soul, the depth of our being, the connection with that which is greater than ourselves. Thomas A. Moore in his book, Care of the Soul, writes:

The intellectual attempt to live into a “known” world deprives ordinary life of its unconscious elements, those things we encounter every day, but know so little about. (Carl) Jung equates the unconscious with the soul, and so when we try to live fully consciously in an intellectually predictable world, protected from all mysteries and comfortable with conformity, we lose our everyday opportunities for the soulful life. The intellect wants to know, the soul likes to be surprised. Intellect looking outward, wants enlightenment and the pleasure of a burning enthusiasm. The soul always drawn inward, seeks contemplation the more shadowy, mysterious experience…”

It is with the eyes of the soul that we see that we are connected to every person in the universe as equally treasured parts of the same creation. It is with the eyes of the soul that looks at this creation and sees it filled with awe and wonder about what God is doing. It is with the eyes of the soul which inhabits both this world and eternity, that we see that time and space are constructs to answer the questions of the intellect but our fragile constructs of time and space collapse into themselves as we go into different dimensions which once seemed so separated now become layers of meaning, where Heaven and earth are transcended by love. Bob’s light in the world still shines with those who have eyes to see. With the eyes of the soul when the ushers lead you forward to the altar and we come forward for communion later in the service, we are able to see Bob at the other side of the table where with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, and all who ever were and all who ever will be join us is that foretaste of being fully in the presence of God who will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Today we remember the light that Bob was and celebrate the light he shone in our lives and in the world and that still shines through him on the other shore of our hearts. The family would like you to come to the house and join them to tell stories about the light you saw and still see in your memory and in your soul.  

Despising Birthright- Jacob Part 3: Love or In Love"

A Reflection for VII Pentecost (Proper 12 A)                        All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. July 27, 2014                                                                         Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 29:15-28        Romans 8:26-39          Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Jacob Part 3: Love vs. In Love

Video of this sermon is on You Tube:   http://youtu.be/jz0QBKaR8bE

We now come to the 3^rd part of the Jacob journey in the lectionary, and here is what has happened so far. Jacob is a manipulator and has swindled his brother, Esau; pulled a fast one on Isaac, his father; and got his mother to help him in the whole fraudulent scheme. He is, as they say a piece of work, but so far he has gotten away with it all, one step ahead of the punishment he so richly deserves. He fled out of the family home and was on his way to hide out with his mother's brother, Laban, until Esau's anger cooled down. Laban owns a herd of sheep and goats and is always on the move to find pasture land, and so staying on the move seems like a good way for Jacob to hide. On his way to Laban's range of pasture, Jacob spends the night  and has an encounter with God. He does not know who God is, and God has to introduce God’s self as the God of Jacob's father and grandfather. Jacob realizes that this encounter can have serious consequences on his usual style of manipulation, and he decides to move on, hoping that he will not have to run into this God too often. He sets up a marker to flag the site and he suggests that “If (notice the limiting word), if God stands by me and protects me on this journey that I’m beginning, keeps me in food and clothing, and brings me back in one piece to my father’s house, this God will be my God. This stone that I have set up as a memorial pillar will mark this as a place where God lives. And everything you give me, I’ll return a tenth to you.”

Since Jacob has nothing, that seems a safe promise to make, for ten percent of nothing is nothing and – remember, Jacob is a manipulator - I think he is hoping that this IOU for a ten percent tip or agent's fee will keep the Big Guy happy and off his back. What does Jacob have to lose? Yet, beneath this cynicism, a seed is planted about God in Jacob's soul. A seed which will continue to gather lots of weeds like in the Matthew parable for today, but in God’s mercy, the weeds remain until the time when God helps us to remove them.

Jacob makes it to Laban's compound and meets one of Laban's daughters and introduces himself as a long lost cousin. He stays there a couple of months and finally Laban asks him how long he plans to stay. Now Laban is also a manipulator, and he doesn't want to pay a wage to this free-loading cousin, so he suggests that, if Jacob agrees to work for a certain number of years, he can marry one of his daughters when that time is up. Laban thinks it is a good solution because he won’t have to pay a dowry, like he had to pay to marry off his sister Rebekah to Isaac. This way he gets free help for room and board and marry off his daughter. Plus he knows that Jacob has fallen “in love” with Rachel and he will be a sucker for that deal. Rachel is the pretty one, but her older sister, Leah, has got weak eyes. Many of the modern translators use phrases like “nice” or “lovely” but the Hebrew is best translated as “weak”. With that handicap she would be considered defective goods for a husband who is looking for a good strong worker. This is a patriarchal society and men rule, and Jacob and Laban speak to each other as manipulating men. In this story, what goes around comes around as Jacob the liar, the manipulator, gets lied to and manipulated. Laban gets Jacob drunk at the wedding banquet and packs him off to the bridal bed with Leah. Whether Rachel is part of this deception, the narrator is silent, but I would not be surprised, for later on in the Jacob saga, she gets pretty tricky and manipulative.

However, something has happened to Jacob. When he had the encounter with God, there was a part of his dormant soul that was awakened to move to a full life, to live into the blessing and birthright of the person he was created to be. To become a whole person means to be connected to the male and female parts of oneself. Jacob is a man living in a patriarchal society and he is adroit with the male side of his personality quite well; manipulators know how to really read people. The Spiritual side of a person, the access to the soul, is usually influenced by the opposite gender side and, for the man Jacob, the other side would be what Jung called the “anima” which is the Latin word for soul. In order to go deeper into his soul, he has to use his anima to approach the God who he met on the road. The anima has been awakened by the encounter with God, and it will take a lot of effort to do the soul work as he becomes vulnerable to God.

Robert A. Johnson in his book We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, speaks of the difficulty of living fully in a patriarchal society;

The patriarchal mentality of our society is inherently partial, dedicated to living the masculine side of human nature at the expense of the feminine and at the expense of wholeness. Into that tight insulated mind, almost nothing can enter. We are proof against the unconscious, against feeling, against the feminine and against our own souls. The one place where we are vulnerable, the one place where our souls can break through our modern armor, is in our loves.

But Jacob is “in love”, and “in love” is not love; it is a psychological malady tied to a spiritual aspiration. The quest for wholeness is short-circuited when the anima is directed to another person and that person is seen as the one who gives meaning to the person “in love”. Robert A. Johnson quotes a Mexican love song: “Always you were the reason for my existence;/To adore you for me was religion.” All of us know songs, poems, plays, movies, lines which exclaim, “At last sweet mystery of life I've found you!” or “You are my soul mate” and the like.

Love is knowing the full person and wanting what is best for the other person; to be “in love” is to project one's own needs and desires onto the other and fixate on those projections. To be “in love” lasts as long as the projections keep coming, but begins to fall apart when we start noticing that the other is not always the perfect one, and the God or Goddess begins to look incredibly human. It is also a burden on the person  who is the subject of the projections because s/he can't live his/her own full life, expending so much energy living the other person's life for them.  It is exhausting meeting every fantasy when who we really are is ignored.

When that unraveling of the illusion happens, the would-be lover has two choices. (1) The lover shifts and finds another object on which to place his or her illusion; always “in love”, but never finding the “right” one, the Juliet worthy enough for this Romeo to suffer, die, and lose themselves in the Juliet de jour's arms; never loving but always being “in love” with being “in love”. This what Jacob does for the next several chapters.  He serially will go to bed with both of his wives AND their maids, and I think he is “in love” every time.  Then when he is disappointed in the level of perfection in one, he moves on to another.  This is just a guess on my part, but that is the way I used to operate as a serial “in lover”, projecting all my need to “find” myself in someone else's eyes instead of doing the hard work of love myself.  (2) The other option is to withdraw the projections and approach the other with respect and awe. Love is only when two people, working on becoming whole, as full individuals, enter into a relationship. Love is not 1 plus 1 equals 1, nor 1 plus 1 equals two, but one plus one equals three which is you, me, and the sacred space between us.

To be “in love” is not a bad thing, for it can open a path to the deeper understanding that there is really this whole other reality deep in our soul, to follow our anima into a relationship with the divine. Johnson quotes de Rougemount, Love in the Western World: “Why is it we delight most of all in some tale of impossible love? Because we long for the branding; because we long to grow aware of what is on fire inside us”

To be “in love” is the beginning, and if we are lucky and work hard at it, we can move to love. When we see our weakness in making God and Goddesses out of fallible human beings, then we can ask for help from the spirit of God to transform us into seekers of a deeper relationship with God. As Paul says in today’s lesson from Romans: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Paul can also be counted on to tell us what love really looks like in the 13^th Chapter of 1^st Corinthians. It does not look like the ego-driven projection of our wants and fantasies on to another person but :

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Despising Birthrights -Jacob Saga Part 2

A Reflection for VI Pentecost (Proper 11)                 All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. July 20, 2014                                                                  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 28:10-19a   Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23   Romans 8:12-25          Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Last month I did a Trilogy (a three part series) of reflections on Abraham and this month I am continuing with a tetralogy (a four part series) on Jacob. We started last week with Esau’s despising of his birthright, and I mentioned the archetype of the “Hero’s Journey”, the mythic journey that each of us takes in order to move toward becoming a full human being. It can be a journey outward, but the point is not geography.  It is, rather, the journey inward into the soul, the sacred place where the Divine meets us.

Gail Godwin in The Finishing School, has a character offer this advice:

“There are two kinds of people,” she once decreed to me emphatically. “One kind you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know can expect no more surprises from it. Whereas the other kind keep moving, changing  . . . They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion they are the only ones who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard, Justin, against congealing.”

 Jacob is on his way to changing. In today’s lesson Jacob has to leave town - fast. He has, with the connivance of his mother, Rebekah, lied to and swindled his father and has stolen the blessing and birthright of his brother Esau. Esau, who is much bigger and stronger than mama’s boy Jacob, is looking for his trickster brother in order to kill him. Rebekah packs Jacob up and sends him to her brother Laban’s land for safety.

Jacob is on the run and there is no one who can help him. He knows that he is all alone. Jacob is rotten and no-good and he is responsible for whatever will befall him when Esau catches up with him. His life is out of control. For those of you familiar with the 12 step recovery program, Step One is “We admitted we were powerless over whatever it is that is lousing up our life—that our lives had become unmanageable.” 

Recovery begins only when you realize that life is out of control, and Jacob is stuck on the pre-step one. He is trying a geographical solution to his addiction to manipulation and, when he comes to this deserted place, it is beginning to dawn on him that he is up Ginguite Creek without a paddle. He cannot use his favorite crutch, manipulation. Not knowing what else to do, he goes to sleep in the hope that his dreams might give him an out. Come on now - don’t roll your eyes at me.  You knew I was going to look at the dream! 

Jacob has not been conspicuously religious so far in the story, so we are not surprised when he does not say his prayers before he goes to sleep. He is not thankful for the day which has just ended because he attributes to luck leaving before Esau caught wind of the scheme. He is not looking for God because he is still depending on his own cleverness. In his mindset, when you are clever and lucky (so far), why do you need God?

 Jacob had to flee from Beersheba and he had no time to pack anything, so he has no soft things to use as a pillow. The storyteller makes a point of the fact that he uses stones for a pillow as a way to tell us how desperate a regular person would be, except Jacob is a good example of a person being in denial. He is not ready to face the full reality of who he can become. He goes to sleep with a clear conscience because the nagging conscience has been repressed to the unconscious. Now if this were a tale of morality, we might expect a dream where the unconscious presents a condemnation story full of gloom, guilt, and punishment. However, the dream that comes is one of support by God. As the sower in the parable from Matthew in today's Gospel lesson suggests, it is not yet time for that condemnation of Jacob's actions - “`No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” There is still time for Jacob to grow and change.

As we do in our dream groups, I might say “If this were my dream . . .”  In my dream I hear God saying that God is patient and God has all eternity and will not push me, only invite me. I will need to do some changing, for as Lao Tzu says (God's messengers come in all different forms)  in the Tao Te Ching: “He who stands on his tiptoes does not stand firm; he who stretches his legs does not walk (easily). (So), he who displays himself does not shine; he who asserts his own views is not distinguished; he who vaunts himself does not find his merit acknowledged; he who is self- conceited has no superiority allowed to him.”

In Jacob's dream, there is a ladder which reaches from where Jacob is sleeping all the way to heaven. Now, if this were a moral uplift story, we would expect Jacob to make the long trek, one rung at a time, up that painful, laborious ladder before he is able to come into the presence of God. However, in this dream God is here, on earth, standing next to Jacob. The message is that God is telling Jacob that God is there with him and will go wherever he goes and will continue to bless him, even if he had obtained the blessing under false pretenses.  God says, “for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." God is telling Jacob that God is not finished with Jacob yet.

In my dream I hear God saying to me that God is faithful, even when I am not. God has a birthright, a blessing which is still in the process of unfolding each day. God is walking with me, standing with me, even when I am too busy with my own agenda to notice God.

In Jacob's dream, God does not climb down the ladder, Jacob does not climb up; the ladder, the connectedness to God, is maintained by the constant stream of angels. Remember that angels are seen as messengers of God, and God is constantly speaking to us (Jacob)  through all of creation when we are awake and in our dreams when we are asleep.

When I claim this dream as my own, for all of these stories are part of our inheritance, I would say, “In my dream, the divine within my soul is saying that I am loved and, to use the line from Paul's letter to the Romans for today, “you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” I hear that I am inheritor of God's Spirit; it is a blessing, a birthright even if I didn't appreciate it when I first received it.

In Jacob's dream, he wakes up and misses the point. He is terrified and he takes the stones used a pillows and makes  a pillar of them , anoints it with oil, and calls it “Bethel”, which means the “House of God”, the entrance to heaven, and he leaves as fast as he can. He makes the assumption that God dwells only in this place, and he wants to separate himself from his spiritual nature so he can go on with life as he defines it.

In my dream I would be tempted to leave the message from God in my unconscious because it calls me to become more fully aware that God is with me wherever I go and whatever I do. When I finish the course on dream group leader training, one of the things they will give me is a plaque of the translation of the Latin saying which Carl Jung hung as a sign over the entrance to his house - Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit,  “Bidden or not Bidden God is here.” One of Jung's followers, Marie-Louise von Franz, wrote, “It seems to me that one of the greatest contributions of Jung and his work is that it taught us to keep our door open to the “unknown visitor.”

On our journeys, awake or asleep, I suggest we keep the door open to the “unknown visitor” who is at the center of our soul.