I wake before 4:00am from a vivid dream, in which I walk with a friend, invite her back to lunch, introduce her to my warm and delightful mother, realise I’ve forgotten to pick up some bread, begin to drive to do so, and find I am back in the suburb where I spent my late primary and then high school years. We cannot find a bread shop any closer than the city, but end up in some industrial complex. I am frustrated but as we are walking toward what we think is a bakery we see an older woman fall over; her son kneels down to help her, we rush to provide support. The dream turns; instead of the woman being checked in for observations it is me who is in some kind of mental health centre; I must lie there for two weeks, I am fed apple pie. When it comes time to be picked up it is my father who comes to collect me, and I wake with a sense of being protected, a sense that all is right with the world because my dad is looking out for me; I am safe.
I want to slide back into the dream but I pick up laptop and write about it; who knows if it will still be there when I wake again.
There are books that interpret your dreams for you; with pearls of wisdom such as: You dreamt of coffee? That means your best friend is jealous of you. Along with Carl Jung, I believe there are some archetypal symbols in dreams, but I do not think that there is one interpretation that can be provided by a dream book. The best interpreter of the dream is the dreamer. What does coffee mean for you? What associations do you have with it now, as it appeared to you in the dream? Some years ago I was fortunate enough to do a dreams course with a wonderful Brisbane-based Catholic spiritual director, Patrick Oliver. Over four Saturdays we were taught, and discussed, the role of dreams in the Bible, the way God would speak to people through them, and how to understand our own dreams. We shared dreams with each other, we listened to their meaning for each other. The stance was one of openness, of willingness to hear what God might be saying to us through them. People say you dream of random things that happen in your life - but why, asked Patrick, does the dream choose that particular event from the thousands of thoughts and actions that you take every day? The details in the dream are often slightly different from reality. Why? How is that difference significant for you? In small groups we were taught how to ask each other questions to help each other listen.
I believe that we can manage well enough without reflecting on dreams. But if we stop and listen, we may just discover a window into our lives that we didn't know was there; we may find we can say with Jacob, when he awoke from his sleep and from his dream: "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." (Genesis 28:16)
