Is it a Dream?

Fr. Al Marcetti, who is a clergy member of our congregation, recently led two sessions in our Academy of the Soul about dreams. The two sessions were enthusiastically and well attended. Fr. Al shared with us a few books by his mentor Robert Bosnak. On Fr. Al’s recommendation, I read Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming.

Fr. Al’s class and Bosnak’s book have opened some new understanding for me in my dream work. Specifically, I have been working with a dream that I thought I knew what my subconscious was trying to tell me. As Fr. Al and Bosnak both pointed out, the more I work with the dream, the more I will learn from the dream. And, most likely, that what I originally thought the dream meant is now something much different.

Bosnak says that my dream is my reality and I must be committed to the continual work of uncovering my reality.

I’ve shared this dream with my wife, my therapist, and my spiritual director, Fr. Al and some of you. Dream work requires my intentional effort along with the participation of a community that is committed to supporting me and assisting me in discovering the depths of my unconscious.

Carl Jung tells us that our unconscious knows more than our consciousness and that our unconscious is always trying to inform our consciousness – many times through our dreams. Jung also tells us that our discovery of God will be in the depths of our unconscious – often a frightful place in which to travel. Scripture as well teaches us that God is discovered in our interior. And there, God may speak to us through our dreams. As Walter Bruggemann says, this can make our understanding of God illusive and requiring polyphonic interpretation.

This is indeed hard work. And this difficult struggle requires the work of a community – the interpretative community.

Last week I introduced you to Ellen Aitken’s work in which she encourages us to accept our roles as an interpretive community. She writes that this kind of community will allow the biblical text to occupy a central role in defining communal conversation, prayer, discernment, exploration, reflection and prophetic leadership. She continues, that the community of interpretation will be a community of struggle, questioning, doubt and at times resistance.

In this morning’s gospel we have an example of the community of scriptural interpretation. The Gospel of Mark is written forty years after Jesus’ death to a community that is suffering under oppression. The writer tells his audience, “Look back through our scriptural story for a reference point in order to look forward for hope”. The writer opens the Hebrew scripture by combining the texts of the ancient communities of Exodus, Malachi and Isaiah.

The writer interprets the three ancient texts and rewrites them into what we hear this morning, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”.

The writer of Mark, then, reflecting on the Hebrew scripture begins to tell the new story – the story of Jesus. The story begins with John the baptizer, a strange, wild and prophetic character appearing in the desert and preaching confession and baptism as the way to God. John also humbly tells those whom he baptizes that another person is coming, and that person will baptize not just with water but also with the very Spirit of God.

This all sounds like a dream, does it not, a dream that came up out of the depths of the night? Who was this John the baptizer? How could such a weird and crazy figure be a prophet of God? Why would anyone go out into the desert to be baptized in the dirty Jordon River? And what does it mean to be baptized by the Spirit of God?

It’s just a dream, right? Surely, it’s not reality? Well, I don’t know. But, for us, it might as well be a dream – it happened so long ago, in time that no longer exists. But, just like my dream it is my reality and it requires the hard work of interpretation.

So, how do we interpret the ancient, foreign scripture? How do we make sense of these bizarre texts that were written thousands of years ago? Do we dismiss them? Do we take them literally? Do we make metaphors out of them?

Well, as Aitken says, an interpretative community struggles with the text, questions the text, doubts the texts and at times resists the text.

It takes everyone in the community, working together to interpret the illusive meaning hidden in the text. It takes those who understand the text as historical. And it takes those who understand the text as metaphorical. And it takes those who understand the text as the expression of a dream. It takes you and how you understand the text. It takes all us to be willing to tell the story of the God that resides deep within our interior in order for the rest of us to be able to see the uniqueness of the creation of the living God. If one of our individual interpretations of the text is missing, the picture of God is incomplete.

This kind of approach of being church together is hard work. It’s hard because we have to respect the fact that the person sitting next to us most likely does not see God the same way we see God. It’s hard work because we must acknowledge and respect the fact that the person sitting next to us probably does believe the same things about God, the Bible and the Sacraments as we do. It’s hard work because we must recognize and give acknowledgment to the fact that we are still in the process of interpreting the scripture together in community. It’s hard work because the only place to do this kind of hard work is in the “hot desert” of being a community.

My guess, though, is that you wouldn’t be here unless you were willing to do this hard work with your fellow desert dwellers. For some reason, you are attracted to this church in the same way those early people were attracted to the community that followed the crazy, wild, prophet John the baptizer.

This church is just like John the baptizer. We are telling people, “The one who will baptize you with the mystery of the Spirit of God is here” – here is each one of us, in you, in you, in you, and in you.

Sounds like a dream – sounds the reality of a dream – sounds like the reality of God trying to tell us something – and we have to do the hard work of continuing to struggle with God’s message; all of us working together, because the more we work with God’s message, the more we will learn what the Spirit is saying to our community of interpretation.