An Experiment in Preaching Using the Dream Work
Approach
A Paper for the Haden Institute Course in Dream Group
Leader Training
Spring 2015
Thomas E Wilson
Contents:
Paper page 2
Appendix 1 Poems page 8
Appendix 2 Sermons/reflections Blog sites page 15
Appendix 3 Questionnaire and Response page 16
The English author, playwright and actor, Peter Ustinov, had
a routine about how diplomats from different countries would do things. One was
about how a German would tell a joke. It went: “I vill now tell you a joke!
Then you vill laugh! Then I vill explain the joke- line by line!”
Essentially that is how I was taught to be a preacher.
Seminary taught me to study the lessons, to translate and exegete the passage
using tradition and reason, so I could convey an understanding of the time,
people and place in which the Biblical stories took place, to exegete the congregation
and community in which I serve, to be a prophet and expose the places where we
as individuals and societies had fallen short of the mark, and to give pastoral
direction and encouragement in living a spiritual life. I would approach
scripture prayerfully but also analytically searching for the “one sentence” of
two thoughts held in dynamic tension which would be the basis of my
presentation on the “real meaning”. I saw myself as the resident theologian
with a piece of paper which declared me a “Master of Divinity”, who could
answer all questions with my expertise.
However, I was haunted by a book by Urban T. Holmes, Spirituality For Ministry (Harper and
Row, 1982). While I had met Terry before, but unfortunately he died in 1981 the
month before I arrived at the seminary where he was the Dean. I am called back
to it from time to time. About preaching he said:
The most intentional – yet still
symbolic –function of the ordained person enables the inner dynamic of the
mind’s illumination by God, which is the hermanutic process. A symbol as
hermanneut possesses an active passivity . . . It comes from the name of
a Greek God, Hermes, who was the messenger between humans and the gods. . . .
Hermes was the trickster (and). . .
the hermanutic function of the priest and pastor may well begin with the task
of subverting the assumption of people. . . .Christ was weird; he did not
fit in. And those who would be “other Christ” should draw a clue from
him.”(p.34-5)
Later, as I moved to fellow seeker moving down from my lofty
perch as “expert” and I lived into what Holmes wrote: to “ultimately stand
before the primordial abyss that lies within each of us and through which God
speaks.” (p.134)..
When I started working with dreams I had to divorce myself
from the task of prayerful analysis to find the one sentence which would
encapsulate the dream. I learned that the dream is my guest sent by God and I
was to prayerfully and playfully encounter it rather than dissect it. I
started to understand the idea “dreams are private myths and myths are public
dreams” and approached the mythic structure of scripture as I would approach a
dream which has not one meaning but whose every symbol is over determined –
having multitudes of meanings.
As a
preparation for starting a Dream Group I facilitated a Lenten Evening Study
Program “Dreams: God's Forgotten Language”
where we looked at Dreams as a way of encountering God. This led to my leading a
six week Dream Group. After the Summer
Dream Conference in May 2014, I warned the congregation that I would be doing a
series of experiments with the sermons for the summer months, I started a
series of sermons (See Appendix 2) using that approach with the Sunday after
Ascension sermon using the Gospel lesson, the Pastoral Prayer of Jesus (John
17; 1-17), as a lead into the summer series. In the sermon I referred to Robert
A. Johnson’s Inner Work: Using Dreams and
Active Imagination for Personal Growth, where I said Jesus could be seen as
having a conversation with his deepest self and doing Inner Work with the heart
and mind of God. In fact I think that all prayer, all worthwhile prayer and not
just braying out loud at religious gatherings, begins with an encounter and
internal dialogue, Inner Work, with the one God, the ground of our being, who
is the very fabric of our DNA and our soul. I suggested Jesus is facing,
literally, the crossroads in his life as he will have to leave his friends
behind who are going to have to go on without him. He calls on the God inside
him, that Spirit dwelling as part of his very being, to hallow the space
between him and them and be there wherever they will go in their new journeys..
I followed
that up the next week on Pentecost where I looked at the Acts story of
Pentecost as a revisiting the Tower of Babel Myth where I said a way for me to
understand the concept of a myth is by defining a myth as a public dream and a
dream as a private myth.
The next Sunday was Trinity Sunday where the first lesson was
about the creation myth . I started off the sermon with a Cosmic Clock analogy which
I had stolen from Jerry Wright. The next week (June 22) I launched into a three
part reflection on the nature of creation using the Abrahamic Myth Cycle as a
basis.
I then moved to a tetralogy on the Jacob Hero’s Journey which
I called Despising Birthrights and I said the Jacob saga was the mythic
structure of a public dream for the descendants of Jacob/Israel, where Jacob
comes into who he was created to be.
This trilogy and tetralogy, while influenced by dream work,
kept the usual structure of a sermon. Then
I attended a Dream Group Leader Training Intensive and we again were
exposed to the use of poetry and I recalled Terry Holmes writing when we pay
attention to the abyss we see scripture as:
poetry- the language of deep memory .
. . the negative evaluation of poetry and imagination is the contemporary
illusion. The imagination is vital to our spiritual growth and poetry is
fundamental to our awareness of the experience of God. It is true that poetry
raises more questions than it provides answers for, but that is what we should
expect from the scriptures. Read as poetry they draw us ever deeper into the
mystery of who God is.(p.135-6)
Poetry and I have had a checkered past. As a teenager, I
loved reading poetry but when I tried to write it, my inner critic kept
attacking my efforts and I was hesitant to show or keep any. My poetry had
turned into a measure of my worth and when I re-read it I declared them
worthless and that label I applied to myself. There was another influence as
well; Ernie Kovacs. .Kovacs, whom I admired for his comic style, was an actor
and television comedian in the 50’s and
had many characters but one was called Percy
Dovetonsils, who appeared dressed in a zebra stripped smoking-jacket drinking a
Martina, wearing fake cross-eyed glasses, lisping bad poetry.. Every time I
would read my poetry out loud my insecure masculine persona would flash the
image of me as Percy “thpeaking” my “poemths” and my inner poet would beat a
hasty retreat. Kovacs died when I was 15 but “Percy” stayed around much longer.
As I grew older and became much less worried about (a) my
masculinity and (b) what others thought of me, I became less threatened but the
inner critic warned me not to share my doggerel. I wrote a prayerful creative
imagination reflection called The Old Man and the Lake based on an
experience during a break about paddling on a canoe on the lake at Kanuga while
I was at the conference and distilled the story into a poem using the French
Pontoum style. I was struck with how deep I was able to go in my soul with the
story and especially in the poem. While it is far from publishable or “good
poetry”, I had to get over the inner critic and accept that it was not the art
which I wanted to use to impress but the poem’s purpose was in order to invite me
to go deeper. I thought I should try it looking at the series of Moses experiences/myths/stories
for the coming weeks through the act of prayerful creative imagination. I
resolved to see myself as the persons in the story and write dialogues between
the characters, write a poem to distill it, then deliver the story and poem,
and place the poem in the bulletin. .( See Appendix 1 for the poems). I began each title in the series with The
Old Man and . . .
Instead of falling into the role as the answer person and
expert, I attempted to encounter the story as I would a dream by living into
it, feeling it with my body and soul, live into it and to speak to the poetry
of scripture with the poetry of the experience. While I explained what I was
doing before I did them, the parishioners were still used to a “Father Tom
explains it all in today's sermon” mode. It seemed to be disconcerting for them
to have more questions after the encounter filled with reflection and poem
which called for them to claim the myth/ dream/ story as their own.
I had some enthusiastic responses from some of the
congregation and pleasant responses from others, but I knew that most people
liked me in this parish and have a knee-jerk reaction to support me and those
who hated it would not want to hurt my feelings. I wanted to see if this
experiment was effective in helping them in their spiritual life. Therefore I
devised an opportunity for anonymous response. (see Appendix 3). The Response Sheet on Preaching Experiment was
handed out at the services for two weeks and included as a link in the
electronic weekly communication to the parish. It was disappointing to find
only a dozen responses returned or approximately a 5% return.
About a third of the responses were positive and stated that
they had found the experiment helpful and would welcome more of the same. A
couple found that it was a good Bible Study on the Old Testament but missed
focusing on the Gospel. Several reported that they were confused at what I was
trying to do with the poems and spent time trying to figure out the structure
instead of listening. .About a third of the people found the experiment went on
for too long and would like it only occasionally as I had gone “overboard” on
the whole dream bit. Several wanted the old style back.. One comment titled
“Time for some tough love” went on for a while about “incessant interpretations
revolving around dreams. . . if we wanted to listen to amateur poetry – we
would go to a middle school poetry day .
. rather than ten minutes of rambling
claptrap, what we do want is two minutes of inspiration to get us through the
week.
Things I have learned;
·
Encountering
the myth as I would a dream is helpful for me and brings an excitement to my
sermon preparation.
·
I
have been at my current church for over 11 years and there has been an
expectation of what the different parts of the service should look like by parishioners.
They have given me a great deal of latitude before they start to grumble but
they have fixed ideas of what a sermon “looks like”.e.g. I stand up in front of
them –I identify main point- expand- confront – give hope. I have been doing
what Holmes called “subverting the assumption and living into being a trickster
and there is a price to pay for being a trickster.
·
A
Poem is meant to be read out loud, but it can be confusing to the listener to
make the shift from listening to prose to listening to a poem, unless the poem
is a published poem by a recognized poet and identified as such, e.g.
Shakespeare, Milton, T.S. Eliot, Wendell Berry, Ogden Nash, and even then for
only a couple of lines.
·
The
process of distilling the dream, story or experience which I encounter to
poetic form is helpful for getting in touch with the other side of my brain and
to open up other images as I encounter the dream, story or experience as my
guest and go beyond just explaining it.
·
If
I write a dialogue I need to set up two different people to act it out after
rehearsal rather than rely on a read narrative which renders it flat. Plus,
since I have a background as an actor the messenger would become the message.
·
Weekly
focus on dreams draws it out too long as most people just shut down when they
hear the word “dream” and sigh “Here he goes again!” Since a dream is a
surprise for healing and health from the unconscious; a prolonged frontal
attack is self-defeating.
·
.Poetry
feeds me as an INFP but we are only 3-5% of the US population- to
expect to reach the majority of a random group that shows up on Sunday is
unrealistic. Yet, as Carl Sandburg wrote a free verse reply
to Robert Frost’s comment that “writing poetry without rhyme and meter is like
playing tennis without a net”, it went: “ Recently a poet was quoted as
saying he would/ as soon play tennis
without a net as to / write free verse.
This is almost as though a / zebra
should say to a leopard, "I would/ rather have stripes than spots," or as
though/ a leopard should inform a
zebra, "I prefer/ spots to
stripes."
·
Preaching in a Liturgical Church lends
itself to one way communication of the Preacher’s understanding from the pulpit
to the people based on the authority of the office to speak from his/her education and questions
or interruptions for clarification until after the service are a breach of
etiquette, whereas Dream Group Work is by its nature dialogical where feedback
is necessary and each seeker is her/his own authority.
·
While I pose as a person who says he
preaches in order to provide people better questions and to live into the
mystery of God, many parishioners come to church for answers and inspiration.
Appendix 1 Poems
The Old Man and the Lake August
2014
The Lake calls and the Old Man answers
J-Stroke paddling to other side
Through waters of Memories
Deep dark Mud nourishes Lilly roots
J-Stroke paddling to other side
Frogs on downed drowned trees
Deep dark Mud nourishes Lilly roots
Worshipping Diana’s waning diadem
Frogs on downed drowned trees
All the waters returning
Worshiping Diana’s waning diadem
Pregnant Virgin Lake giving life
All the waters returning
Through waters of Memories
Pregnant Virgin Lake giving life
The Lake calls and the Old Man answers
The Old Man Crosses the Nile
On the island where
bricks are made
Seeing contempt from
the other side
I hear the cries of
the people
As the truth spoken
out of pain
Seeing contempt from
the other side
Your competing tricks
of competing Gods
As the truth spoken
out of pain
Being an illusion
which seems to happen
Your competing tricks
of competing Gods
The consequence of the
problem
Being an illusion
which seems to happen
Meeting in sacred
space between us
The consequence of the
problem
I hear the cries of
the people
Meeting in sacred
space between us
On the island where
bricks are made
The Old Man Walking Through the
Water
Pulling
out of the water
Standing
like a wall on either side
Carrying
their heavy burdens
Differing
between complaining and changing
Standing
like a wall on either side
Imagining
remembering what it was like
Differing between complaining and
changing
Having
not been asked to be born
Imagining
remembering what it was like
Creatures
of God sharing curiosity
Having
not been asked to be born
Horse
and Rider tossed into the sea
Creatures
of God sharing curiosity
Carrying
their heavy burdens
Horse
and Rider tossed into the sea
Pulling
out of the water
The Old Man and the River of
Complaints
On the river of
complaints
Flooding me with whining
Even without the outward chains
Not thinking they have enough
Flooding me with whining
About what their hands wanting
Not thinking they have enough
Bound into slavery for appetites
About what their hands wanting
Praying for changing hearts
Bound into slavery for appetites
Does not end but begins
Does not end but begins
Praying for changing hearts
Even without the outward chains
On the river of complaints.
The Old Man Drawing the Water Out
of the Rock (poem)
Knowing that God is
with me
I am stopping and
listening
Coming to talk to the
Rock
Deciding on asking
questions
I am stopping and
listening
Touching the depth of
being
Deciding on asking
questions
Sharing the same star
dust
Touching the depth of
being
We are not meant to be
alone
Sharing the same star
dust
Having living water
deep within
We are not meant to be
alone
Coming to talk to the
Rock
Having living water
deep within
Knowing that God is
with me
The Old Man and the Ten Words of
Living Water
Responding to your
awe-filled words;
What do you want from
me?
Your fire setting me
free for you
Without wounding your
very being?
What do you want from
me?
Can I keep my hands
from grasping,
Without wounding your
very being,
Holy time, talent,
treasure, neighbor?
Can I keep my hands
from grasping
Ten carved words on my
stony heart,
Holy time, talent,
treasure, neighbor
For a new day, a new
will, a new soul.
Ten carved words on my
stony heart.
Your fire setting me
free for you
For a new day, a new
will, a new soul,
Responding to your
awe-filled words.
The Old Man and Aaron (Poem)
God singing, “No Golden Calf”
No getting away from yourself
Into wish fulfillment fantasies
Rather into worship of the Creator
No getting away from yourself
Not worshipping your creations
Rather into worship of the Creator
Going deeper into my very soul
Not worshipping your creations
But finding one’s true self
Going deeper into my very soul
Dancing together in the valley
Finding one’s true self
Without wish fulfillment fantasies
Dancing together in the valley
God singing, “No Golden Calf”.
The
Old Man and Joshua (Poem)
Feeling
the end of my days,
Spending
years running away
But
She always gets there first.
We
humans are so God-haunted
Spending
years running away.
Every
time I breathe Her spirit enters,
We
humans are so God-haunted.
I ask
Her to show Herself to me.
Every
time I breathe, Her spirit enters
But
all I could get were glimpses.
I ask
Her to show Herself to me,
She in
third person is blasphemy
All I
could get were glimpses
As She
always gets there first.
She in
third person is blasphemy
As I
feel the end of my story.
Singing With All of the All Saints
Singing with all of the All
Saints,
We schmucks filled with
empty longing,
Not for religion but
for the loving God,
Knowing our own strength is
lacking.
We, schmucks filled with
empty longing,
On days we cannot manage
ourselves,
Knowing our own strength is
lacking.
But unearned mercy pours
over us
On days we cannot manage
ourselves.
Our divisions more apparent
than real
With unearned mercy pouring
over us
Cramming for finals by
singing God's song.
Our divisions more apparent
than real
In our religions, but not
for loving God.
Cramming for finals by
singing God's song
Singing with all of the All
Saints
As For Me and My
Family
Joshua said when we talked,
that
He and family would serve
the LORD.
Suggesting I put away those
other gods,
Failing gods in whom I ship
worth.
He and family would serve
the LORD
Not grasping what they had or
done.
Nor hoarding the opinions
of others,
Nor failing gods in whom I ship worth.
Without grasping what I
have or done,
Today help me to place
trust,
Not hoarding the opinions
of others,
Nor leaving non-controlling
serenity behind.
Today help me to place
trust,
Putting away those other
gods,
Not leaving non-controlling
serenity behind.
As Joshua suggested when we
talked.
The
Summons
Coming to Palm shade
Hearing sighs and murmuring
God’s breath spirit call.
Appendix 2
Sermon/reflections Blog site
November 16, 2014 http://pasontomstomes.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-summons.html
APPENDIX 3: Preaching
Experiment Questionnaire
Response Sheet on Preaching Experiment
(June 1- October 19, 2014)
The
experiment began on the Sunday after Ascension Day and continued through 19th
Sunday after Pentecost. During those 20 weeks there were 4 times I did not
Preach –August 10th [I attended a High School Reunion] when Ted
preached, August 24th [I was attending Dream Group Leader Training],
when David preached, September 21 [Pat and I were on vacation in Maine] when
Bob preached and October 5th
[Stewardship Sunday] when I did not preach but read the poem and posted
the whole Reflection and Poem on the church’s Web site and Facebook pages and
my Blogsite. The first 7 weeks of the experiment focused on using a Jungian
understanding of Dream Work to encounter the lessons from Genesis while
maintaining my usual expository style approach (e.g. “This story means this and
therefore this is what we are called to do in response). On week 10 I switched
from doing a deductive rational style sermon to sharing an intuitive
imaginative reflection by telling a variation on the story as if it were my
dream story with a poem distilled from the encountering of the Exodus stories.
These reflections were titled variations of “The Old Man and . . .”, where through prayerful and playful imagination
the Old Man (me) and Moses became one. I justified that shift by saying that
Jesus was a story teller.
1) I
found the reflections :
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2) I
found the poems: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3) I was
able to respond to the reflections and poems by:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4) I
recommend that future sermons be:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5) I
recommend that future reflections and poems be:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6) My
use of the church websites, blog sites and Facebook to read the sermons,
reflections and poems was:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7) I
learned:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
8)I thought:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
