Patterns

Over the years of my life there have been certain recurring themes or patterns to my dreams. These patterns have to do with places; certain sections of different roads or highways, particular rivers or a lake, a particular small town, a house filled with bookshelves loaded with books, and other such places. Over the years one gets used to seeing these particular places in our dreams, and we develop a comfortable familiarity with them.

In this past year I began to notice a shift which marked the fading away of those old familiar dream patterns. I woke up one day recently and realized it had been months since I had seen any of the old familiar places in my dreams.

I know when it changed, or it may be more accurate to say I think I know when it changed.

Last November we knew Mom was not doing well, and very well may not make it to the end of the year. The story of our last visit to see Mom while she was still living has been told in another place.

This particular dream happened around that time. In that dream, Mom was in what appeared to be a car. The car window was up, and though I did not clearly see him, Dad was in the drivers side. In my dream I yelled out, "Momma!" She turned her head and smiled at me through the window. Then the dream faded away.

A very short time after that dream, Mom died and a few short weeks after that, Dad was gone too. The two people who had been a central and vital part of the pattern of my life were gone. The whole pattern of my life was irrevocably changed. A link in the chain of the collective memory of my family has been cut off, and now it is my brother and sister and I who carry what we can of that collective memory.

My more recent dreams, the ones I can remember anything about, no longer have those familiar patterns of places, or events. It is if in the land of sleep, a certain degree of anarchy prevails in the universe of my dreams. Perhaps new patterns will eventually emerge, I do not know.

I do know that significant life events touch one 's being at many different levels. I am not one to spend a lot of time trying to understand dreams. I believe there is a reality to dreams that resists the prognostications of soothsayers and psychoanalyst alike. If He who is the giver of dreams wants me to understand a particular dream's meaning, He will make it clear in His own good way and time. I make no claim to prophetic dreams, and reserve a certain skepticism for any who claim so.

God has created us as complex beings. We often focus on the parts of our being and tend to lose sight of the interrelatedness of those parts. I am not so sure how well we as humans understand the fullness of the organic being of our humanness. I am coming to realize more and more just how deep and complex the patterns of our being and life really are. As the Psalmist put it, we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Far Above the Tree Tops

I was in the church parking lot after this morning's services, waiting for my wife and daughter. It was one of those days when the sun was shining, but over in the west the clouds were high and giving a hint of possible weather to come. It was warm but not overly humid, and a nice breeze was blowing; the kind of breeze that makes for good kite flying if one was so inclined.

As I looked up off to the west, I saw them. Vultures or hawks or eagles, I do not know; they were to far away to tell, but there they were, high in the sky riding the air currants as such birds are wont to do. I watched as they circled and spun and drifted seemingly effortless on the wind way, way up high above the earth. I wondered just how high their altitude was, but could not begin to even give a good guess. I could only imagine what their view was of the river valley over which they were soaring.

I imagine most people at one time or another in there sleeping dreams have dreamed about being able to fly like a bird. As I watch these birds far off in the distance riding the currants of air far above the earth, I thought of how it was in my own dreams of flying, I never could get above the tree tops or clear that tall building in the way. In those dreams there was always a certain frustration that I could only go so high, when I really wanted to go so much higher, way, way up; up where these birds were soaring adrift on the wind; to have that unencumbered view of the earth below; to escape the bonds of gravity and fly way up high and far, far away.

I suppose such dreams could be psychoanalyzed and all sorts of conclusions be drawn from such analysis. Or, if Daniel or Joseph were around, one of them could give me a reliable interpretation of such dreams. But I do believe such dreams reflect some yearning, conscious or not, for a view of a bigger reality then what is encompassed in our finite creational boundaries. Isaiah talks about "mounting up like eagles..." Figurative language? Yes... But also perhaps a hint of something wonderful yet to come; a day when we see a bigger reality then we ever knew existed before; when we soar up high above the tree tops adrift on the wind with all creation opened up below to our view.

~ The Billy Goat ~

The Other Side of the River

I grew up on a farm in Michigan, just a few miles from the border with Ohio. A stream runs through that farm; a small river entering the land at the NE corner and cutting a diagonal across to the SW as it flows on to it’s appointed place; that another story in itself. A sizable part of our cropland was on the other side of that river. We would drive our farm equipment through a shallow fording place in the river to get to that other side.

I have found through the years that often in one’s sleep, we dream of places we use to know, but though in our dreams we recognize the place, in our dreams the place is often much different, yet the same. Over the years I’ve had a few dreams like that involving this part of the farm that was across the river. One of those occassions was in February, 2001, and at that time, in another context, I first penned these words.

In my dream, that area across the river was much more vast. It was a wheat field, the wheat ripe for harvest. As the dream started I was walking along the riverbank in a part of the field yet to be harvested. Then I came to a part that had been harvested; the short cut off straw stems standing up exposed to the blue sky and shining sun, white clouds here and there also in the sky. What I remember is the very real sense of tranquility and peace. No hustle and bustle, no scurrying here and there. So I walked on in the familiar yet unfamiliar field across the river.

Then in the dream I came to a road, and the dream ended. As lay there in my bed, I had a sense as though for a very brief second the curtain of time had been opened a slight crack, and I had a very brief glimpse of an eternity yet to be.

"Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it enterd into the hearts of man what God has in store for those who love him." (I Corinthians 2:9)

~ The Billy Goat ~

The Bridge

To where do the bridges go?
The ones in my dreams
That arc high into the sky
To a far off place I can see
Only indistinctly,
But a place that beckons to me.

When I go on those bridges,
Up those high arcs
That defy design.
Only so far can I go.
Vision fades. I awake.
What is over there
I do not know,
But in those dreams
To that place I must go.
To where do the bridges go?

© Oct. 3, A.D. 2008

The Chariots of God

I was walking along a road. It was dark but not so dark that I couldn't make out the images around me. As I looked over my left shoulder, I saw them. Whirling pillers formed like tornados... They were in an even row equally spaced apart, and I sensed, though I did not actually see them, that there were others of these whirling tornado like pillers on my right as well. I was not afraid and continued walking. At the point where the funnels were touching the ground there were sparks flying, like you see when grinding metal... The night sky was somewaht hazy but I could make out that the stars were there, though not clear.

At some point it hit me what the whirlling pillers actually were.. "ANGELS!". I shouted. "They're Angels!" I have no idea who I was saying that to for it seemed I was alone.

All of a sudden the whirling pillers rushed by and I felt myself being carried up. I could see the stars clearly, but they started to blur like they do in a Star Wars movie when you hit warp. I was shooting through the universe. Stars were streaking by...

I was awake. I turned over in my bed.... I wondered, "Was what it was like for Elijah?"

~ The Billy Goat ~