A priest makes a major life decision based on the contents of a dream.
Last week, I attended a spiritual talk given by a priest, Fr. Burke Masters, a former college baseball star and then minor-leaguer who is now the chaplain for the Chicago Cubs baseball team. (The chaplain gig is a volunteer sideline for him. His day job is as a pastor at a suburban parish.) He has the sort of calm, confident, steady demeanor that many professional baseball players seem to have.
Fr. Masters spent some years as the vocation director for the Joliet Diocese, so it's not surprising that much of his talk was about the story of his vocation to the priesthood. As a youngster he had no intention of being a priest - in fact, was not even Catholic - but through a sequence of events, he became Catholic as a young man. While still a young adult, he felt the call to the priesthood, and entered the seminary. But then came a family catastrophe: his mother, with whom he was extremely close, passed away. Distraught, he took time off from the seminary, and thought he shouldn't be a priest after all. So he added a vocation crisis to his family crisis.
Then one night he dreamt. In the dream, his mother told him, "You will become a a priest" (or something similar). He interprets that dream as some sort of a spiritual or other-worldly intervention. He went back to the seminary and became a priest, and says he has no regrets - loves being a priest. But if not for the dream, he may not have gone back.
Has a dream ever spoken to you, or given you life advice like that? I think I dream as much as the next person, but I don't think I've ever been the recipient of "dream advice". I don't recall anyone ever appearing in one of my dreams and saying something memorable or life-altering.
The NY Times has a quiz on dreams. I didn't do that well on the quiz; I don't know much about the science of dreams. But it has some fun facts and factoids about dreams. It seems there is a common dream that the dreamer's teeth fall out; I don't recall ever having had that one. Another common dream is of falling. I had that one occasionally as a child, but haven't had it in many years. I do have the famous "college dream" from time to time, where I am taking a test in a college course but don't know any of the answers. I've also had a variation on that dream, where I have a final scheduled for a class I didn't know I was enrolled for. I also used to occasionally have a dream in which I've started smoking again (in real life, I quit smoking while in my 20s); I wake up from those dreams feeling badly about myself.
In addition, when I am sleep-deprived (as happens semi-regularly), I find the urge to dream coming upon me so powerfully that it virtually forces me into a state of sleep, whereupon I start dreaming immediately. That can even happen when I'm driving; fortunately, I've learned through experience to be aware of that risk and try to take precautions to prevent it.
Joseph in the New Testament was a dreamer; in Matthew's infancy narrative, every mention of him has dreams guiding his action. Undoubtedly there is a literary intention there, to connect him with Joseph the son of Jacob in the Old Testament (the famous Joseph of the "technicolor dreamcoat"). So dreams in the Bible can play a mystical role - as they did for Fr. Masters on the occasion of his vocations crisis.
Have dreams ever played an important spiritual role for you?
No. Probably because I decided early on not to pay much attention to my dreams, not try to remember them or think about them much, and not to give them any significance.
ReplyDeleteI regard dreams as a time of freedom for my brain. It is like a horse that gets saddled up and works during the day, however at night it is let out to pasture to do whatever it wants.
I know I have some general categories of dreams most of them are at earlier places of my life, although the buildings and environment of those places have often been reshaped. All of this seems to be consistent with some theories that sleep is a time when our memories get reprocessed to free up places for new memories.
Occasionally I will wake up to a particularly vivid or unusual dream, but I promptly forget it, probably because I do not process it enough to store in my long-term memory.
I consider my waking mind to be rather creative; I frequently get new ideas. A lot of these ideas come to me in mornings when I am sitting on the porch sipping coffee and eating a lite breakfast. I have a sketch pad to take notes. Often, I am rather amazed at an insight that comes without much thinking or external stimulation. They seem like gifts from heaven.
Maybe these early morning periods occur because I have let my brain dream away of the clutter of past experiences during the night. Maybe that lets my brain put things together that I had thought about before.
"I regard dreams as a time of freedom for my brain. It is like a horse that gets saddled up and works during the day, however at night it is let out to pasture to do whatever it wants."
DeleteI once read a newspaper or magazine interview with a psychologist who had done research on dreams. She stated that many of our dreams are about things that had caused us stress in our waking hours in the very recent past, i.e. earlier that day. I've noticed that does often seem to be the case. Although as noted in comments here, dreams do often seem to incorporate elements from earlier in our life: a house, a car, a friend, a smoking habit, from years ago.
Never had a dream that changed my life although I find them interesting when I remember them. Latest theory is that we close our eyes at night and the brain stimulates the visual cortex to keep it from degenerating. Sounds great but why the crazy plot lines and recurring dreams. I don't get many recurring dreams anymore. Except for parking my car in the city and not being able to locate it. Why, over the past few years, does a certain coworker keep popping up in my nocturnal adventures as a fellow protagonist? I remember one spiritual dream when I was a kid. In the dream, I was laying on my back in a field, looking at a starry sky. Then, as I looked, stars parted like layers of curtains. My whole being came to life as I awaited in excitement for the final celestial curtain to part when I would see God at the other end of the universe. At that very point, a cloud rushed across the sky and shielded me from the Beatific Vision and I woke up. The quotation "See God and die" came to mind. Didn't change my life but I thought it was a cool dream.
ReplyDeleteThat was a very cool dream, Stanley!
DeleteIt here needs to be a study on how many times the average person can listen to somebody else blabber on about their dreams before they actually scream. My stamina for that stuff is pretty short.
ReplyDeleteI do go through periods where I have terrible nightmares. I find that if I sleep sitting up with the audio book going, they go away.
I seldom remember my dreams. But I’ve had variations of the college dream. When I do remember a dream - usually when I’ve been awakened unexpectedly or early morning when it’s almost time to get up - they seem to be related to worries that I have. I’ve had a couple recently that were related to my trying to decide about going home and how to handle it. I’ve never gotten advice in a dream or had a spiritual dream. Just worry dreams now and then.I’ve never seen a dead relative in a dream either. Occasionally I’ve had a dream that had friends from years ago that I haven’t even had much contact with for years. Generally I don’t worry about my dreams, even my anxiety dreams.
ReplyDeleteI only got a 7 of 12 on the NYT quiz. I am a very light sleeper, I wake up multiple times in the night, and often I don't sleep well, so I remember a lot of dreams. Most of them don't make a lick of sense.
ReplyDeleteOnly once did I have a dream that was prescient. I dreamed that my mother died. It was a very short dream; in it, it was several months after her death. It had a heaviness and sadness to it. In real life, not the dream, I had been planning to go back home and visit the folks that day but was busy and tired, and thought about putting off the trip. After I woke up from the dream I decided I'd better make the trip, because time could be growing short. Which indeed it was, my mom would not live to see another birthday.
But I have dreamed about other family members dying, and they didn't. It always gives me the willies though. I have dreamed that I died myself, and was just waiting around for my ride.
The recurring dream I have had lately is that I am my present age, but am trying to drive our school car, which had been a 1964 Dodge Polara, with push button transmission.
I have shared before that I follow Father Nathan Castle's podcast. For about 25 years he has gotten dreams from "stuck souls" who died in traumatic circumstances. I don't take it as revelation or anything. Mostly it is something to listen to while I'm cleaning up the kitchen.
An oft quoted story was that August Kekule discovered the benzene ring in a dream in which he saw a snake bite its own tail, the ouroboros. Well, now they think others discovered it before him and he used it as a story to cover up any inspiration from other scientists. Well, it's not a dream but the physicist who invented the bubble chamber says he got his inspiration while having a beer with friends. More scientist BS, who knows? But I'm having another beer.
ReplyDeleteI've had dreams that have left me shaken, even after I awake. I don't remember now what were in the dreams. But I remember the emotions I felt upon awaking.
ReplyDeleteI see a lot of dead people and cats in my dreams. Most seem like churned up guilt, fears, and anxieties, and I don't remember much about them after I wake up. However there are a handful that remain as intense and clear as waking memories. The difference between them and other dreams was a vivid sense memory of touch, sound, smell, or color. I'd be inclined to call them "visitations" had I not been told from Day One that I was born with "an overactive imagination gland." I presume these types of dreams are sparked by intense feelings of loss.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one who dreams about cats. I don't have them anymore, so I guess they're "ghost cats". I dream about dead family members a lot too, but usually they are like a flashback to an earlier time when they were still here.
DeleteAfter one of the cats dies, I often "see" it in my peripheral vision, just a shadow or a footstool or something where the cat hung around at the end of the hall or in the cat tree. You get so used to seeing them in life that your mind thinks for a moment that it's seeing them after they've gone.
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ReplyDeleteOff topic. It’s been 7 years, 8 months since a severely disturbed 17 year old shot and killed my niece and her husband. These years have been hard on the family as the lawyers kept finding ways to delay the trial. My sister was so frustrated that the trial was set, delayed, set again, new delay, on and on. She died last November never knowing if he would get off on some kind of emotional illness defense or not. But it’s finally almost over now for the rest of the family at least. He was found dead in his jail cell last night. No sign of foul play. But there will be an investigation. They are hoping that this time the story won’t make the news all over the world. Their youngest legally changed his last name because the trial,had been rescheduled (again) for January and he didn’t want people, especially kids at his high school, to realize that the victims were his parents. And he feared being stalked by the neo- Nazi haters who were horrible online after the crimes, and the KKK who left hate flyers in his old neighborhood. True nightmares that will probably never totally leave him, his sibs, his uncle and grandfather.
ReplyDeleteWith the killing of your nice and her husband, you and your family have had two unexpected events that have totally altered your lives so that they will never be completely “normal” again. But it is hopeful that at least some progress is being made toward being normal again.
DeleteI hope the return of you and your husband to your home goes smoothly and at least some small signs of normalcy will reappear such as a toad on your doorstep
" I hope the return of you and your husband to your home goes smoothly and at least some small signs of normalcy will reappear such as a toad on your doorstep." Yes! What Jack said.
DeleteSending prayers that your great-nephew can eventually find healing and peace. It's too bad that he had to change his last name because people wouldn't respect his privacy.
Thank you for prayers. I have prayed for the teen killer’s soul, and for his parents, who gave him shooting lessons, bragged about what a good shot he was even while knowing he was emotionally ill, and left their guns unlocked while knowing that their son was emotionally ill and attracted to violence, and neo- Nazi movements. But I’m sure they never imagined this and I’m sure their life has been hell too but in a different way. He was 24 and has been in jails and mental health prison facilities since he was 17. I don’t think he ever expressed remorse it I don’t know.
DeleteInteresting paper on the connection between nightmares and PTSD. There was/is a notion among some psychologists that nightmares are nature's way of purging trauma.
ReplyDeleteBut the study suggests that the nightmares themselves trap the dreamer in the trauma for an extended time and affect his ability to function. The dreamer has nightmares in all phases if sleep, not just REM stage, when nightmares occur for "normal" people.
Lucid dreaming and other techniques are being used with some success to halt the nightmares.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471655/
I once had a dream that woke me up immediately. No plot, no characters, just hundreds of bats. I had been sleeping on the couch facing inward like Andy Capp and cutting down my oxygen. I read later that these intense frightening short dreams are nature's way to wake you up so you don't die.
ReplyDeleteI hope that dream precipitated a life-changing decision not to take naps on the davenport.
DeleteWell, somewhat. I still like to sleep on the davenport but the general rule is this: don't shove your face where your butt was.
DeleteNo naps on the davenport except for cats has been a non-negotiable rule around here for 40 years. Raber complies but grumbles about it: "Nothing a woman hates more than to see a man enjoying himself."
DeleteNice to hear that article of furniture referred to as a davenport. That's what my parents called it when I was a kid. Seems it's commonly known as a couch now. Or a sofa.
DeleteWe got a new davenport a few years ago that isn't suitable for naps. Even the cats don't like to crash on it (nor to worry, they have about 38 other preferred napping spots. I have found a LA Z Boy is admirable for nap purposes l. I turn on a golf tournament and am out within 10 minutes.
Not sure how Illinois Midwesterners say it, but "davenport" is something like "dabmpor." We swallow the "t" at the end of words with a glottal stop. Then we have the gall to laugh at the Canadians across the border who call the davenport a "chesterfield."
DeleteI gave Dad's LaZBoy to my kid when my folks died. It was lemon yellow leather (say that three times fast). That thing had thousands of golf naps in it. As I continue with my task of downsizing, I've begun to write short "biographies" of some of this stuff to preserve the stories that live in them.
We had a davenport when I was a boy back in Ohio in the late 1940s and the 1950s. I don't think I have heard the word sInce then. The woman who lived next door referred to cars as "machines." From the sources I just googled, I gather she was about 20 years behind the times.
DeleteEvery time I see the title Dreaming, I am reminded of a recording of a song that dreaming could have been the title of but is actually called Linger in Blissful Repose by Stephen Foster, here sung by Jan DeGaetani, which may not be to everyone's taste, since classically trained singers are not always well suited to singing popular songs. But I think she's just fine. And here's a bonus track, Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway.
LOL, my folks called it a davenport too.
DeleteThe furniture in our house got a lot of hard wear. The davenport was re-upholstered in Naughahyde two or three times.
In the two areas I’ve lived ( Calif and DC area) “ couch” is the most common term with “ sofa” in a fairly distant second place. I’ve never heard anyone call a couch a “ davenport”.
DeleteWell, here's a site you can waste 30 minutes on real quick: https://dialectsurvey.wordpress.com/
DeleteI see "davenport" is falling out of usage, but you still hear it in the Great Lakes. "Couch" and "sofa" are most common across the country. "Chesterfield" and "settee" are used only in a few areas.
Interesting site, Jean. Yeah I could waste a lot of time there.
DeleteI was reading yesterday that someone thought Tim Walz had a "Nebraska accent". Whatever that is. I hadn't been aware that we had an accent.
I always figured you folks in Nebraska sounded like Sen Chuck Grassley of Iowa. He says "IN-shornce" and "MAY-zhure" for "insurance" and "measure."
DeleteWalz doesn't sound Minnesotan, but his wife sure does.
If you've ever heard Gov Gretchen Whitmer talk, you've heard a real good Michigan accent.
I passed a book from Rust Belt Press around my American lit class one time that differentiated Midwest accents and linguistic quirks, such as saying "well, that's diff'ernt" for anything ranging from perplexing or downright idiotic. Student with Puerto Rican roots from California was quite taken with it, so I asked him to report on his findings. Much hilarity ensued.
Most of us don't put the emphasis on the first syllable in words like insurance. Those of us who grew up in the western end of the state do sound a little different than the ones who grew up in Omaha or Lincoln. I don't quite know how to describe it. We are a little more soft-spoken and often leave off the "g" in words ending in "ing". We have some expressions that are a little more old fashioned.
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