Holy Family
I grew up attentive to my dreams. This was one of the great gifts from my mother. She helped me learn not only to remember, and contemplate, and seek to understand my dreams, but also to transform them. When I had a nightmare, which was often enough, I would pad into my parents’ room and wake her – always my mom – and she would make room in the bed for me and hold me and ask me all about it, and listen for as long as I needed to talk through it. Then – most amazing thing – she would invite me to rewrite the ending, the scary part that had awakened me. “How could you make this a happier dream?” she’d ask. “What might go differently?” And she would leave it to my creativity and inner wisdom, and I would shape a new ending, and feel so much better. And then she’d send me back to bed.
In one recurring nightmare, I would fall from a great height to my death – a la Wiley Coyote – and wake up partway down. In the interactions with my mom that followed, I would save myself from falling by flying. This dream-and-revision sequence apparently happened often enough that one night Mom – maybe out of sleep deprivation – asked me: do you think you could change this dream while you’re in it? And, as it turned out, I could. The next time I had this dream, I realized I was dreaming, and I saved myself by flying, and it was amazing. This was how I learned that I could have flying dreams – which are awesome. It was also my first experience with lucid dreaming, which can be trickier. I learned that lucidity was relative, and knowing that I was dreaming while I was dreaming didn’t necessarily lead either to waking or to happier dreams, and that dreaming that I was awake when I wasn’t was disorienting and often upsetting. I liked it better when I had a firmer grasp on waking reality.
As a student of my own dreams through the chapters of my life, I learned to be attentive to theories of dream interpretation and the psychology and physiology of dreaming. This was an interest that dovetailed nicely with my study of literature – both directly, in that the study of symbols in dreams and literature often overlap almost completely, even when an author hasn’t consciously intended this, and indirectly, in that I’ve learned to see the act of writing as a dream, or trance state for the author, even when the author is myself. My mother’s wisdom is very present for me here. I can change the ending. I can help myself to feel better, when that’s what’s needed.
But what if that’s not what’s needed? I think of my dreams as a place where I work through life challenges at a symbolic and mostly unconscious level. Mostly I don’t remember my dreams, or I recall them fleetingly upon waking. If I don’t rehearse the dream memory, it quickly slips away to nothingness. But when a dream awakens me, I am attentive to it in the old way, as I figure it means there’s some part of the challenge that requires my waking, conscious attention.
In grad school, a beloved professor once asked me: “You know that theory of dreaming where everyone in the dream represents some aspect of yourself?” When I acknowledged I’d never heard of it, she said, “Well, I hate that theory.” Which at the time made me laugh and laugh. But I learned to apply this theory to the interpretation of not only dreams, but also literature, especially fiction, in helpful ways — and to other “texts” as well. Some years ago, though, I had a jolt when I realized the theory might also apply to non-fiction writing . . . especially to my own non-fiction writing. Indeed, the understanding slowly dawned on me that the theory might just apply to life itself, to reality as we know it. That maybe, in our encounters in this life with other people and their stories, we might be trying them on, as it were – seeing to what extent their perspectives jibe with our own, determining to what degree they represent us, connect to us.
It’s been some years – I can’t say exactly how many – since I first encountered José y Maria, the political cartoon by Everett Patterson shown above. It startled me today to see that it was published back in 2014, well before the era of the current occupant. I believe it came to me in my Facebook feed. My recollection is that it didn’t come with commentary, pre-digested – that it took awhile for me to really begin to see it. An image rich with visual detail, a sort of dreamscape, the parts of it revealed themselves to me slowly. Minutes passed before I really understood that I was seeing a representation of the holy family. And when the epiphany came, I also felt the warm wash of shame creep over me. Patterson had caught me, somehow; I, who often profess a philosophy of treating anyone we meet as if they might be the Messiah, I was caught unawares. I hadn’t seen them. I had mistaken them. I had failed to see our connection.
Beloveds, as we celebrate this holiday season together and look for the returning light, let us also honor our dreams, and all that the darkness holds for us. Like seeds in the earth, we return to the mysteries of darkness in order to rest, renew, and ready ourselves to spring forth once again. As we do so, may we learn to see in new ways, and especially to see one another and the gifts that each of us brings just in who we are, and in how we are connected. Blessed be.