Laurence Olivier - Hamlet |
It’s
3:53 am and all is well, except that I can’t sleep. I’m usually a sound sleeper, and tonight
seemed no different – until 3:53 am when I woke up and was pretty much wide
awake. Up to that point, I slept well, perhaps too well, as my body seems to have no interest in going
back to sleep anytime soon.
I have no idea why. I worked hard
this weekend, so I should be tired. I do
have a lot going on, but none of it is troublesome to the point of stress or
worry. Unlike Hamlet, I don’t think I’m
suffering from anxiety or a guilty conscience that would deprive me of the kind
of sleep that leads, perchance, to dream.
As, you
can see, after ten minutes or so of lying in bed with the sure (alas, futile) expectation
that I would return to a deep slumber, my mind started racing. My first thought was that I hadn't blogged
for a while and that a post in the
morning about sleep and dreaming might be interesting (you can be the
judge). I thought about whether what I
ate last night might be keeping me up (I don’t think so) and how a lack of
sleep would be particularly challenging on Monday morning as my employer frowns
upon napping during work hours. But once
I started composing this post in my head, along with a grocery list and new
passwords for my internet accounts, it was over. My brain was off and running, and sleep was
left in the dust at the starting gate. Dreams
seem out of the question.
Dreams play a major role in the Judeo-Christian
tradition. You’ll recall that Jacob was
dreaming of a stairway to heaven long before Led Zeppelin, when God promised
that Jacob’s descendants would “be like the dust . . . , spread to the west and
the east.” (Genesis 28: 14) Jacob’s son
Joseph (the one with the Technicolor Dream Coat) was a prolific dreamer who saw
in a dream that his brothers one day would bow down before him. He also interpreted Pharaoh’s dream that
predicted the great, seven-year famine, allowing the Egyptians to store up
inventories of grain and leading the aforementioned brothers to bow down before
him. (Genesis 37; 41) It was also in a dream that King Solomon received
the offer from God that he could not refuse:
“Whatever you ask, I shall give you.”
(1 Kings 3:5) Solomon asked for wisdom. At this point, I think I would ask for more
sleep.
Saint
Joseph, in the New Testament, never speaks a single word, but he sure seems to
be a sound sleeper. God told Joseph in a
dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife for “it was through the Holy
Spirit that the child was conceived.”
(Matthew 1: 20) I’m not sure that
I would have believed that one when I woke up in the morning, but thank God
Saint Joseph did. After Jesus was born,
God sent two more dreams to Joseph, one telling him to take his family to Egypt
to protect the child from King Herod, and the other telling him that Herod had
died so it was safe to return home to Nazareth.
(Matthew 2: 13-15) Not everyone
was as attentive to God’s message-laden dreams as Joseph was, though. You’ll recall that Pontius Pilate’s wife
warned Pilate to “[h]ave nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have
suffered much because of him today in a dream.”
(Matthew 27: 19)
It
seems that God does some of his best communicating through dreams. Perhaps it’s the only time he can get us to
pay attention. Now I don’t believe that
every dream has some deep, subconscious meaning or that dreams necessarily
predict future calamity or riches. But I
do believe that our dreams reflect our hopes and fears and that God
communicates with us all the time in whatever ways are best for each of us,
including in our dreams. I know of too
many people who have received great comfort in dreams of lost loved ones living
happily in heaven to dismiss those dreams as mere coincidence or a trick of the
mind. As for me, I've found on more than
one occasion that when I’m stuck on a homily, the answer comes to me in a dream
– so much so that I keep a pad next to my bed.
I jot a quick note in the middle of the night and (usually) return to a restful
sleep. Without fail, I’m pleasantly
surprised in the morning to find a lucid note that resolves my writer’s block
perfectly. In my view, that’s the Holy
Spirit at work.
No comments:
Post a Comment
God is listening . . . comment accordingly.