DREAM

What did you dream last night? What is the last dream you had that you can remember? And what of dreams during our waking hours, the things we would love to experience, gain, see manifested in our world? What do we mean when we say that something is a dream? What are your dreams? A cosy house in the country? A Bugatti? A family with the person you love? Trekking in Nepal? Are your dreams more modest, such as going to work and not feeling like you hate your life and job and everyone around you? Could be. Dreams are funny like that, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” (Psalm 126:5-6). I love that imagery. I can see this person, walking in the fields, sowing seed while their tears stream down their cheeks… The tears drop to the ground, met by the thirsty soil, intermingling with the seeds as they, too, fall to the ground.

This is a person who knows pain, difficulty, and hardship. This is a person who knows sleepless nights, knots in the stomach, and mornings that herald what feel to be unbearable days. They cry, and sow, and cry, and sow. It seems it will never end, like there will always be more tears, more heartache, as though these seeds are but a figment of their imagination, tiny and purposeless. Could it be that something will come of all this sowing? Could something good sprout from such sorrow? The weary soul asks: could things be good again?

Our hearts get battered and bruised in this thing we call life. We find ourselves walking the rows of our fields, sowing what we believe to be things worth sowing, beginnings, our ‘once upon a times’, that in which it is worth investing, is worth growing. We walk and walk, and sometimes that field seems to never end. There is always tomorrow morning and the need to get up and go to work. Or wake up and face the fact that there is no work. Either way the field goes on, and on, and our tears continue to fall. In moments like those, where are those bright tomorrows, where is the relief for which we ache? Where are our dreams? They are in the making. Where is the version of ourselves for which we long? It is in the making.

Psychologists have long been interested in the realm of dreams, but so have our ancient ancestors. They were not only interested but they took the whole dream-world seriously. They were open, paid attention and incorporated it as one of the key aspects of what it meant to live life, and live it well. The biblical story of Joseph is an example of the centrality of dreams. Joseph’s story follows an arc from dreams in his teens that foreshadow an experience that comes true when he is roughly around the age of forty. From the moment of the dream until its fulfilment and the beautiful conclusion of his life’s arc, he undergoes years of walking his field, sowing in tears.

Now the Hebrew root of the word ‘dream’ (chalam) is the root chalom, meaning to bind firmly, to make plump, to (cause to) dream.

What I find so beautiful in this story is that of the two dreams he dreams before his life takes a dramatic and painful turn, one of them is quite significant. In this one dream Joseph and his whole family are sheaves of wheat, and the sheaves of his family bow down to his sheaf. Something is happening in an invisible realm, and we get a sneak peak of that through this dream. In dreaming this dream about sheaves, Joseph is ‘binding something firmly’ (as the word suggests), and what he dreams is himself as a bound sheaf of wheat (Gen. 36:7). He is a sheaf of wheat. He is that something firmly bound, he is the dream.

What is a dream? Perhaps dreams are something we cannot imagine, something so good, beyond our ability to predict or control. Our imagination opens us up to a world that is just that – beyond – and it is there that our heart goes when we dream. When we leave behind the shackles of shoulds, musts and the daily grind of ‘adulting’ (a great word if there ever was one). There beyond the mundane and repetitive, that is where we find expressions of that for which we long, yearn, and hope. And whilst most discourse on dreams revolves around events or achievements and possessions, I wonder what if that space is about us, as a dream, who we could be. What if all those things that come to mind as we enter that space beyond are expressions of who we long to be? What if we are the dream? Yes that may very well involve events and achievements and possessions, but not as the primary fulfilment of the dream, not as the dreams themselves. In this case they are a subset of the dream, of who you long to become, and that focus makes all the difference.

 So what is a dream? Perhaps we could say it is seeing a beauty we thought impossible come true in our world.  Maybe a dream is seeing things come together; not individual stalks of wheat, but a sheaf, a bigger picture of that which has grown from our tears as we sowed. Maybe a dream is easier to see because it is a sheaf, the fullness of who we are, and not a single strand or aspect of ourselves, because there is a fullness to it that makes it easier to detect and feel.

What did you dream last night? As you walk and weep and sow, you are inadvertently treading the path that will one beautiful tomorrow, be your field of wheat. And maybe this means that you will see your bigger picture, the strands of yourself and your life come together to form a beautiful fullness previously unimagined. “He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” What if, like Joseph, you are the sheaves you bring with you? What if the dream is who you have become through weeping, sowing and rejoicing? What if you are the dream? 

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