Advent Dreams

 



I have come to understand and accept that a disturbing dream or vision might actually be constructive...like criticism?! So when I found myself on the edge of a precipice looking out on a not Grand Canyon like chasm but a dark and jagged and foreboding one, I tried in a sleepy state to remain there and lift my gaze. That is where the struggle was felt. Similar to being unable to move when being chased in a nightmare, I was unable to lift my gaze, from whence cometh my help! Then I woke up!

So processing began and I realized a possible interpretation: We are on the verge of Advent which this year feels a bit like a frightening precipice. And the journey upon which we are called to embark is a dark and murky one. Uncertainty has eclipsed “normalcy” and disease (dis-ease) has infected any sense of peace. 

So I am indeed disturbed! In my waking as well as my sleeping!

Yet unlike my dream I am somehow able now that I am awake to lift my gaze! I am able to avert my preoccupation with the enormity of the task with a curiosity about hope and faith. That may be all I can know! 

Some use the phrase active waiting for Advent to distinguish it from the kind of numbed waiting we have displayed in the past. Unlike the paralysis I felt in my dream I am incorporating hope and a deepening faith to step over the threshold and into a liminal numinous space which is real! Guide us waking and guard us sleeping...


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