Paying Attention to Dreams

For years I was very dismissive of the meaning of dreams.  They seemed so chaotic and random to me that, I argued, any attempt to interpret them was surely just an act of the worst eisegesis.  Yet friends, family, and intellectual influences from all walks of life have cautioned me against such casual dismissal.  The primary person speaking this truth to me was my ex-wife Courtney.  She loved talking about dreams and trying to think together about what they could mean.  Sadly, I was often far too arrogant and dismissive to take her speculations seriously, but now others in my life keep telling me to pay attention to my dreams and I'm starting to suspect they might be right.  Friends like my former professor at Greenville Rick McPeak, my little sister Rachel, the psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson that I have been listening to recently, my mother, and even the old-time Methodists that I study for my doctoral work:  they are all saying, "Take these things seriously!  We don't know where they come from!  In fact, they might even come somehow from 'God.'" Not all these influences would state it quite that way, but the message is the same: reflect on dreams.  So that's what I intend to do in this post.

I had a nightmare three nights ago that hasn't left me and it still haunts me.  Those who know a little about my life this year will perhaps not at all be surprised by the nature of the dream.  It was actually very simple and very short, but also quite compelling and realistic.  I was trying to bridge a deep, endless black abyss between myself and my ex-wife, Courtney.  I wanted so desperately to reach her, but I had no way of crossing the divide.  I tried to start building a bridge to get to her, but I didn't have the skills to make a bridge out of sticks and trees and rocks.  Yet I did the best that I could do.  After I had built the bridge out over the canyon/abyss by about ten feet (which was still a small fraction of how far I had to go), it all collapsed while I was on it.  As I tumbled into the abyss which seemed to be endless, I simply yelled up, "I'm sorry, Courtney.  I tried and I failed."  I woke up horrified by the feeling of endless descent into nothingness.

So what does this dream mean?  On one level it seems rather obvious, right?  My unconscious mind is trying to somehow cope with the tragedy of my divorce.  Now in the dream I seem to be more of a "victim of circumstance" than I actually believe is true because, when I am honest, I realize that frequently within my marriage, I was the lazy one who did nothing and, especially near the end, Courtney was the one trying to build a bridge to me.  Perhaps most accurately I could say that we both made efforts and both of us did rather pitiful jobs at it too, yet our efforts were sincere.

But is the dream also about more than just my marriage?  Could this also be a dream about my deep anxieties regarding death?  After all "the abyss" is the other major character in this little narrative.  The endless blackness and the fear that it evokes within me has been a constant companion my entire life. Into the abyss I have always yelled, "Are you down there God or is it just death all the way down?  Can I trust myself to fall into your hands or am I just imagining you are down there for my own comfort and peace of mind?"  I can hear Freud's voice making me feel shame for my pitiful and weak desire to believe in a God (likely because I have unresolved parental issues).  I can hear Marx calling religion the opiate of the masses.  I can hear Ayn Rand saying that life is chaotic and you simply have to will yourself to power.  Nietzsche seems to sing a similar tune sometimes.  And then the Buddhists seem to keep insisting, "Don't worry; it's all in your mind anyway," which is a message I sometimes find to be good news and other times find horrifying. And, all the while, Ivan Karamazov keeps persistently reminding me of the almost infinite capacity that humans have for evil.  Thank God for Alyosha... and for Dorothy Day and Jane Addams and John Woolman and Dr. King and B. T. Roberts and my maternal grandfather.  Without people like that, I would be lost in the abyss for good.

Sometimes I also wonder if perhaps I am the abyss or that the abyss is within me.  Am I confronting my own sinful, evil nature when looking into the blackness?  I remember going camping by myself once in Kentucky and a mighty thunderstorm came up (I later learned a tornado had touched down nearby).  The fury of the wind and lightning and rain petrified me.  When lightning hit a nearby tree, I wanted to pack up my tent and run away to safety, though something in that moment whispered to me, "Stay.  Face the fear."  I realized why Martin Luther was converted in a thunderstorm; everything within me wanted to cry out to my own St. Anne.  So I did stay the night, but pitifully and within the safety of my dad's old '92 Honda Accord.

I know on an intellectual level that I am in a very dark and difficult chapter of life.  I can conjecture what people must be saying about me.  I am cognitively aware that my friends and former friends must be saying, "Poor Greg!  Look at his life!  I cannot image losing what he has lost."  But then a part of me -- at least during my strongest moments -- just doesn't give a damn any longer what people think about me.  Am I a lost cause?  Maybe.  I don't know.  Am I part of a story that is a comedy or a tragedy?  Only time will tell.  Am I Cain or Abel?  Am I a good son who offers an honorable sacrifice before God and then gets killed for it?  Or am I the evil brother who envies how the Other's sacrifice is honored by God and who then turns into darkness and evil and becomes consumed by the Shakespearean green-eyed monster?  These are all questions that are as mysterious to me as the abyss in my dream.  I fear them, yet I cannot seem to be able to avert my eyes.

In any case, I know this: I lament the ending of my marriage and I would not wish this experience on my worst enemy (by the way, I don't think I have a worst enemy unless I maybe count myself). In the meantime, I will try to keep sacrificing and surrendering more deeply to the One who is in control and has the answers. I will myself to believe in that One.