A night of multiple dreams from which I recorded these:

2:30 A.M.

It is a balmy night, fireworks illuminating the sky. A festival is underway filled with people of all ages and backgrounds. Their merry-making attracts me.

7:30 A.M.

It is winter, the ground frozen and ice-covered. Lethargic and dispirited, I’m visiting a home care patient in the city who resembles me, not only in appearance but also in behaviors. She does not have much to say. Readmitted to the hospital for the recurrence of her infection, she remains aloof to my offer of prayer. I again visit her upon her discharge home. This time, she asks me to drive with her to her mother’s home. We head outdoors, mindful of our steps lest we slip and fall.

 Both dreams speak from my psyche’s shadowy depths. The first dream seems to counter Minneapolis’s fifth night of rioting and looting, further demoralizing our country with senseless torching of businesses and terrorizing surrounding neighborhoods. Such evil, however vicious, passes with the emergence of daylight and the resiliency of those afflicted. Humbled, tearful, leaning upon strength not their own, they carry forward their story for everyone’s learning: there’s vibrant life despite unjust systems.

The dream also suggests fresh grace of multiple colors, alive and well in my psyche, thrilled by my home-going in the company of others.

In the second dream, my psyche is frozen, inert, stifled by irreversible symptoms and attitudes that mess with acceptance of my dying body. In this story as chaplain, I’m still in control as I sit with this lackluster patient, another image of myself, better served if left alone to find her own God. More pain and suffering will eventually break apart defense mechanisms and open her psyche to radical healing. This has been my experience in hospice, and such will accompany my last breath.

Such dreams prod deeper faith in my spiritual awakening that’s working out, one day at a time. I’m grateful.