A Mother Dreams of Her Dead Daughter

I just came across a blog post by a woman whose daughter had died five years before. She writes that in previous years, this day of the anniversary of the death was very difficult for her. Then she describes a very powerful dream she had of her dead daughter. Here is how she describes the end of the dream and her reaction to it:

The sight of her was startling. “Shelagh, you can’t be here. You’re dead, remember?” She laughed, put her arm around me and assured me that all was well. “Oh, Mom, you’ll be okay. And I’m fine now.”

At that point the dream ended. The Baron had come in the front door, returning from church, and the rattle of the doorknob wakened me. The dream itself was so vivid that I was disoriented for a few minutes after I came back to the surface.

Since then, things have been the same, but different. I don’t grieve any more. Instead, I remember all the things I loved about my daughter and how fortunate I was to have been her mother – as rocky as that road was sometimes.

The whole post is lovely. Remembrance Day for Shelagh at The Neighborhood of God.

Cornelia: "These are my jewels"

I have a friend, let's call her Rachel, who is friends with a very rich woman (over $100 million). Rachel is more of the first generation upper middle class. One time when Rachel went to Paris to stay at her friend's apartment, Rachel came back and told me that what she remembered most was a painting she had seen in a museum. Rachel said that the painting depicted a story about a woman who had been widowed and was poor. The widow was visited by a rich friend who was showing off her expensive jewelry. The widow had called for her children and showed them to the wealthy friend, saying "These are my jewels." I could understand why seeing that painting had meant a lot to Rachel during her visit with her wealthy friend at the Paris apartment.



I think the painting Rachel saw was a genre painting of Cornelia. This subject was very popular in the 18th and 19th century. Cornelia was a Roman noblewoman born almost 200 years before Christ. She was widowed and refused to remarry, devoting herself to raising her children. Cornelia is the origin of the "These are my jewels," quotation. I like theEncarta write-up on Cornelia, but I took this image from the Wikipedia article.

The idea of Cornelia and the rich woman has maintained its power over time, I think because our minds really do associate jewels with children. In Anglo-Saxon England, around 736 AD, Bede reports that the mother of the Abbess Hilda had a dream when she was pregnant that she pulled a most precious jewel from under her dress. This dream was understood to foretell the importance of the child in her womb. The metaphor of jewels for children even shows up in Freud's dream analysis. In Dora's first dream, she wants to save her jewelry box from a fire and Freud makes the association of the jewelry box with the woman's womb.

Christian Dreamers of the Year 2008

I have two candidates for news stories of Christian dreamers of the year 2008: Stojan Adasevic and Crystal Dixon. Stojan Adasevic is the man who used to be an abortion doctor in what was then Yugoslavia and became an leading anti-abortionist based on his dreams of Thomas Aquinas. Crystal Dixon is the African American woman in Ohio who was fired from her job as a college administrator for writing an Op Ed piece in the Toledo Free Press criticizing the idea that people leading a homosexual lifestyle are civil rights victims comparable to African-Americans.


It seems obvious why Dr. Adasevic qualifies for this award, but you may be wondering about Ms. Dixon.

From her website we learn that Crystal Dixon's inspiration for writing the op ed was a divine mandate with which she awoke one morning:

In early April, 2008, I read an opinion piece by Mr. Michael Miller in the Toledo Free Press entitled “Gay Rights and Wrongs. I absolutely respected Mr. Miller’s right to express his opinion while at the same time, I disagreed with several of the points that he made. One of the freedoms that makes this country great and makes newspapers great, is the privilege of exchanging different points of view via public print communications. Early on Sunday, April 6, 2008, I arose with a divine mandate (you may understand the term as divine inspiration) to write my opinion, based on my Christian faith in response to Mr. Miller’s article. I wrote my personal opinion, based upon my Christian faith, rooted in the foundation of Holy Scripture which is my Constitutional right.

Ms. Dixon is being represented by the Thomas More Law Center and the announcement that she had filed suit was published in early December. I tried to find the op-ed she wrote in the Toledo Free Press, but they do not have an archive function. So here is the copy of the letter that Ms. Dixon has posted at her website.

4/18/2008
OPINION
GUEST OPINION
- The Toledo Free Press
Gay rights and wrongs: another perspective

By Crystal Dixon

I read with great interest Michael Miller's April 6 column, "Gay Rights and Wrongs."
I respectfully submit a different perspective for Miller and Toledo Free Press readers to consider.

First, human beings, regardless of their choices in life, are of ultimate value to God and should be viewed the same by others. At the same time, one's personal choices lead to outcomes either positive or negative.


As a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo's Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are "civil rights victims." Here's why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few. Frequently, the individuals report that the impetus to their change of heart and lifestyle was a transformative experience with God; a realization that their choice of same-sex practices wreaked havoc in their psychological and physical lives. Charlene E. Cothran, publisher of Venus Magazine, was an aggressive, strategic supporter of gay rights and a practicing lesbian for 29 years, before she renounced her sexuality and gave Jesus Christ stewardship of her life. The gay community vilified her angrily and withdrew financial support from her magazine, upon her announcement that she was leaving the lesbian lifestyle. Rev. Carla Thomas Royster, a highly respected New Jersey educator and founder and pastor of Blessed Redeemer Church in Burlington, NJ, married to husband Mark with two sons, bravely exposed her previous life as a lesbian in a tell-all book. When asked why she wrote the book, she responded "to set people free... I finally obeyed God."

Economic data is irrefutable: The normative statistics for a homosexual in the USA include a Bachelor's degree: For gay men, the median household income is $83,000/yr. (Gay singles $62,000; gay couples living together $130,000), almost 80% above the median U.S. household income of $46,326, per census data. For lesbians, the median household income is $80,000/yr. (Lesbian singles $52,000; Lesbian couples living together $96,000); 36% of lesbians reported household incomes in excess of $100,000/yr. Compare that to the median income of the non-college educated Black male of $30,539. The data speaks for itself.

The reference to the alleged benefits disparity at the University of Toledo was rather misleading. When the University of Toledo and former Medical University of Ohio merged, both entities had multiple contracts for different benefit plans at substantially different employee cost sharing levels. To suggest that homosexual employees on one campus are being denied benefits avoids the fact that ALL employees across the two campuses regardless of their sexual orientation, have different benefit plans. The university is working diligently to address this issue in a reasonable and cost-efficient manner, for all employees, not just one segment.

My final and most important point. There is a divine order. God created human kind male and female (Genesis 1:27). God created humans with an inalienable right to choose. There are consequences for each of our choices, including those who violate God's divine order. It is base human nature to revolt and become indignant when the world or even God Himself, disagrees with our choice that violates His divine order. Jesus Christ loves the sinner but hates the sin (John 8:1-11.) Daily, Jesus Christ is radically transforming the lives of both straight and gay folks and bringing them into a life of wholeness: spiritually, psychologically, physically and even economically. That is the ultimate right.

Aquinas Visits Yugoslav Abortionist in Dream, Converted to Life

This doctor says he was visited twice in dreams by a figure who identified himself as "Thomas Aquinas". Remember, Thomas Aquinas is the one Nancy Pelosi and other pro-abortion Catholics use to claim that there has been a difference of opinion among Catholics regarding the beginning of life.

Catholic News Agency

MADRID (CNA) — The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.

“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported. “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.”

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint. He didn’t recognize the name”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,’ St. Thomas told him. “Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

“That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion—something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc. The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby’s heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being,”

After this experience, Adasevic “told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions. Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university.”
After years of pressure and on the verge of giving up, he had another dream about St. Thomas.

“You are my good friend, keep going,’ the man in black and white told him. Adasevic became involved in the pro-life movement and was able to get Yugoslav television to air the film ‘The Silent Scream,’ by Doctor Bernard Nathanson, two times.”

Adasevic has told his story in magazines and newspapers throughout Eastern Europe. He has returned to the Orthodox faith of his childhood and has studied the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

“Influenced by Aristotle, Thomas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization,” Adasevic wrote in one article. La Razon commented that Adasevic “suggests that perhaps the saint wanted to make amends for that error.” Today the Serbian doctor continues to fight for the lives of the unborn.

Hat tip to Jackie at Stand Firm

Widow Hears Voice of God in Bangladesh

Hosea 6:6 shared this from his parish listserve:

As many of you know, I recently returned from a month in Bangladesh and India, working with people of many faiths on religious freedom issues. I also had the privilege to fellowship with and teach people from the indigenous churches.

To give you a brief glimpse, I visited Orissa, India, where since August Hindu extremists have killed dozens of Christians, burned over 4,000 churches and homes, and driven some 25,000 into hiding in the jungle. Police have been helpless to overcome the violent mobs and in some cases have been complicit in the attacks. The extremists continue to tell Christians they must convert to Hinduism if they want to return home, and many who remained in their villages have already been forcibly “converted” to Hinduism.

The Hindu extremists claim that the violence is due to aggressive Christian evangelism that destroys local Hindu culture, and so the Indian government has said one of its responses to the violence will be to enforce existing anti-conversion laws aimed at curbing Christian mission work. Despite all these difficulties, one Indian Christian leader told me that he remains confident: “Ultimately there will be justice. God will prevail. People will know the truth.”

In Bangladesh, a Muslim-background woman told me that she and her adult children converted to Christianity after her husband died. After many years they are still the only Christians in their village of 100 Muslim families. In the beginning, the villagers pillaged and destroyed her small store, beat her, shunned her, and even threw feces at her door. She was thinking one day of where she could go to escape when she heard the Lord tell her to stay put: “If you leave, the people will not receive the light.” So she stayed. When her neighbors came and mocked her, she thanked them. That was in 2005. Today there is a meeting of seekers in her home every Friday night.

This is how the Kingdom of God is growing in the most challenging circumstances— with love, obedience, and faith. Thank you for your prayers for me while I was gone. I’ve learned a lot and hope to share more with you this Sunday after service.

In His grace,
Angela

I see similarity to the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was ready to give up and leave Birmingham because of the threats on his life. It was then that he heard the voice in his kitchen telling him to "Preach the Gospel, stand up for truth, stand up for righteousness". Through out his life he credited that night as exceptional and the source of his courage. In both cases the person was ready to give up and leave the hostile situation when they heard the voice of God encouraging them to stay to spread the gospel.

More dreams about Sarah Palin

As you may recall, the Huffington Post posted a piece by Eve Ensler that began with her dream of Sarah Palin. It turns out that Slate's editor, David Plotz, has also posted a piece about dreams of Sarah Palin:

I rarely remember my dreams, but for the past week, GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been haunting me. Night after night, she appears in my dreams, always as a scolding, ominous figure.
When I mentioned my Palin dreams to Slate colleagues, they volunteered their own. One Obama-supporting colleague dreamed she had urged her young son to kill Palin with a string bean. Another dreamed she was at a fashion show and Palin served her crème fraîche on little scooped corn chips. A third says, "In the Sarah Palin dream I keep having, she has superhuman powers but is not really a person at all. In fact, she is more like the weather with glasses and an up-do, pushing clouds around and pitching lightning bolts."

Plotz is requesting that readers submit their own dreams. I am not sure what he has received by email, but there is one dream posted in the comments to his article:

So whatever it was I have actualy dreamed, I don't actualy remember. What I do remember is that I woke up with a totaly different feeling for her then I actulay have in real life. In the real life I think she would make a pathetic VP and the worst president ever, now and next year and in four years, and in 10000 years because she proved to be both silly and mean. The feeling I woke up with however, was that she was actualy very nice... I think in my dream I must have been one of her kids or someting and she was sweet and kind to me and gentle and very protective. I felt a bit like a baby chick under his hatching hen...

At first when I red David's invitation to write our dreams about her I thought that I have nothing to say since I don't actualy remember anything that can be narrated. But then I thought more about it... I believe it could be relevant however regarding what makes her fans adore her, beyond the fact that she is a lot like them. Those people that are so childish and naive and feel so unprotected and long for a mommy that would tell them "it's ok, baby, don't worry, mommy will look after everything, mommy has solutions for everything, it's ok...! All will go good, dear, just... "trust and obey" " as one of those hymns goes... And if there is something nice about her is that she really seem to be one of those "hatching hen" kind of mother... But this may help with one, two, five, 12 kids... When it is about so many, I still believe that a smart dad may be a better solution...:)

Putting Recent Events in Perspective: Nightmare for Christian Converts in India

In a refuge camp for displaced Christians in Ghumusar Udayagiri, India, a pregnant woman recounts her nightmare:

Hearing the chanting women march by, Shyamala wiped her nose with her unwashed sari. She started to cry, again. Her feet are swollen and bloody, her stomach heavy. And she has a recurring nightmare.

"I am falling and falling down a big ditch. I see my newborn baby below me," she said, weeping. "And it is dead."

This article in Monday's Washington Post is a must read.

Conversions to Christianity have been happening fast among impoverished tribal communities in Kandhamal, a remote district with few links to the outside world or state services. The Christian population here, largely made up of traditionally nature-worshiping ethnic groups, has swelled from 6 percent in 1971 to 27 percent today, according to government census data.

The sad result is a growing violent backlash by Hindu's demanding the Christians convert to Hinduism. The Christians fear that they will be killed if they leave the refuge camp to return to their village and do not convert back to Hinduism.

The nightmare makes sense in a very real way as the woman is fearing the death or herself and her newborn baby. But on a metaphorical level, the baby may represent the new self who adheres to the new religion. Thus, the fear of the death is of the newborn faith.

Pray for the strength of faith for these martyrs.

Hat tip to Mollie at Get Religon

Eve Ensler Dreams of Sarah Palin

I continue to be interested in the progressive feminist reaction to the nomination of Sarah Palin for VP on the Republican ticket. The woman who wrote the Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, has posted a piece on the Huffington Post that begins with her dream:

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I have noticed that polar bears have become a powerful symbol for many on the progressive left. Well, in Tony Crisp's dream dictionary, he writes that ice in dreams represents being cold emotionally or sexually. And a bear represents feelings about being a solitary creature, capable of living alone and surviving; danger of sudden unpredictable responses, feelings of threat.

Well that makes me think of Hillary Clinton. Clinton was perceived as a sort of "ice queen" so maybe the polar bear works in part as a representation of Hillary Clinton. Of course, it isn't Palin's fault that Obama defeated Clinton and then didn't pick her for VP. However, it does seem as if Palin is wearing the claws of Clinton as a trophy. This is how Saturday Night Live played it.

I am also thinking that Palin represents the opposite of Clinton. Palin has a large family, while Clinton had the one child. Palin's husband has supported Palin in her career while Clinton subordinated her career to her husband for many, many years.

I do like very much that Ensler shares her free associations. Almost at the end, she writes:

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Interestingly, this is not her first mention of rape in the piece. She mentioned rape earlier here:

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

Tony Crisp writes that rape "can mean that you are overcome by events, by other people dominating you, or by your internal rejected emotions. Rape in dreams is very different from rape in real life ..." Well, the bear also meant "danger of unpredictable response" which seems similar to me to being "overcome by events".

I think this dream is about the shocks of not getting a woman VP on the Democratic ticket and then getting the woman VP on the enemy Republican ticket. It is so outside the world view of progressive feminists that their perceived enemy, the Republicans, could possibly have a woman president before the Democrats. It so shocks their basic understanding that they even have nightmares. (They even deny Palin is a woman.)

Iraninan Converts to Christianity: Dreams, Visions, Signs and Wonders

Greg Griffith at Stand Firm posted a very interesting article from Fox News today about converts to Christianity in Iran. Greg's focus is on the growing crack down. But for me, the interesting part of the article comes after the part Greg selected. I am interested in the growing number of conversions.

The article ends just when it is getting interesting:

Marshall said these restrictive policies may be creating a backlash among Muslims. “There are indications that with the deep unpopularity of the regime that people are turning away from Islam,” he said.

“Seeing Muslims converting to Christianity is directly threatening to an Islamic regime,” said Moeller.

He compared these small groups of converts to early Christians living under the yoke of the Roman Empire, who met in secret and whose beliefs were “dependent on dreams, visions, signs and wonders.”

Because Bibles are rare in Iran and teachings are not "as dependent on the Bible as Evangelical Christianity in America is,” said Moeller, there is a “real lack of scriptural foundation."

But despite the growing pressure from the state, worshippers continue to practice, and Moeller said the house church system seems to be growing.

“We’ve got confirmed reports of groups of Muslim convert believers doubling in size in the last six months,” he said.

That's my bold on "dreams, visions, signs and wonders". There are many theologians (e.g. John MacArthur's book Charismatic Chaos) who believe that dreams, visions, signs and wonders were only for biblical times and the early church. But powerful dreams continue to be reported by a subset of converts and in this example.

It is sad that these people are do not have much access to the Bible. And awe inspiring that they are converting to Christianity despite the threat of death. I guess we should not be surprised that the Holy Spirit finds a way to reach them.
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Divine Death Sentence: clothing metaphor version

Timothy Fountain at North Plains Anglican wrote an interesting piece about what he refers to as the Divine Death Sentence. In it he refers to the verse Col 3:5. This led me to contemplate the whole section of Col 3: 1-14 more generally, and to reflect on the use of both the metaphor of death and the metaphor of changing clothes used there.

Colossians 3: 1-14 Rules for Holy Living

1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.[b] 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Tony Crisp's Dream Dictionary has some good material about clothing as metaphor in dreams:
changing clothes symbolizes changing one's mode of behavior, role or mood,
undressing is revealing one's real character and a move towards intimacy,
new clothes are a change in attitudes, new feelings about the self.
This is applicable to the verses, as Paul is talking about the old ways of behavior that must be put aside and the new attitudes that must be put on.

I had a dream a few weeks ago in which clothes figured prominently. In one part of the dream I was deciding what clothes to get in order to change my outfit and kin another part of the dream I was concerned about taking off my old dress to put on a new gown. I was afraid the old dress would get stuck around my elbows going over my head. I was asking some women to help me.

I think this dream was about what I would call the Divine Death Sentience: clothing metaphor version. The dream dictionary also has something for being unable to get clothes off -- too cautious in relationships; difficulty changing attitudes or self-image; self-protectiveness; avoiding intimacy. Of course, in my dream, I was looking for assistance and asking for help. In the dream I was looking for assistance with the difficult project of taking off the old self and putting on the new self.
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Today's Lectionary and My Molly Cat Dream

Some dreams are so rich and layered with associations that we ponder them for quite a while. In today's Lectionary readings, there was this verse from the story about the anointing of David:

1 Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

This brought me back to my dream about my Molly cat having lost weight.

We live in a society where being overweight is a major stigma and Molly is a fat cat. She gained this weight, first from grief when her son, Stripes, was killed by a car. And then she gained more weight when we brought in a new young cat to replace Stripes. Our intention has been good, but it had the reverse effect. The new young cat became the center of attention and even worse, thought it was good fun to harass old Molly.

In Waking Life, it is never Molly that gets up on the table or my desk. It is the new younger cat. And in Waking Life, it would be a good thing for Molly to loose a little weight. But in the dream, I am punishing Molly for being on the table and then I notice she has lost weight, and realize that she is dying.

Today, a month after having the dream, I started to think this image had something to do with my concerns about my father having been designated for hospice care by his doctor. And I was also suddenly remembering a year and a half ago when my daughter was so sick and her doctor said that she wouldn't treat her individual illnesses until we confronted the underlying source of stress -- her high school!

In March, when I had come to visit my parents and attend various family business meetings, I learned that my sister's goal was to get our father designated a hospice patient. We had a fight because she did not want me at the meeting with the doctor. Mom and Dad said let her have her way, so I did. At the appointment, the doctor did designate him for hospice. Dad was so weak and he was ready to give up and die. It made me realize how much I didn't want him to die. I wanted him to try to get better.

In the case of my daughter, she was sort of giving up, too. I think her life was so miserable, she was just not even trying anymore. Her high school was so performance and appearance oriented that it just squeezed the soul right out of her. A girl two years ahead of her had not come back for senior year because anorexia had taken over.

So the image of the weak Molly cat reminds me of both of these. In the case of my Dad, his illnesses are the result of being overweight. But in the case of my daughter, it is more about having been in a high school culture that places so much emphasis on appearance, and how weight fits into that.

I was particularly drawn to that verse from the Lectionary because, when I think of being among Christians, I want to be among people who look at the heart and not the outward appearance. I was so appalled by this post. When I described it to my daughter, she said it was "the sort of thing fifteen year old girls do." I realized that it was the sort of thing that had made my daughter so soul sick she was just giving up back then. It reminded me of those awful Mean Girls, the Queen Bees who had dominated her old school through their contempt and ridicule.

The good news is that my Dad got better and is "no longer a suitable candidate for home hospice." And when the doctor explained what she thought was the source of my daughter's medical problems, I moved her to another high school the next week.

Ira Milligan's Understanding the Dreams You Dream

This book is very grounded in scripture. It has a short section on decoding dreams and a rather extensive dream dictionary with a biblical emphasis. This book is valuable because of the way he links imagery to scripture. As I read through it, it occurred to me that it would be very helpful in doing work on the Dreams of my namesake, Perpetua of Carthage. However, I was very uncomfortable with his approach to sin and his emphasis on demons.

I have heard others discuss the issue of demons and witchcraft with regard to dreams. But I have simply not had experience with demons or witchcraft. So, while I respect their warnings, I also see warnings away from material that I have experienced as positive.

For example, he writes:

Likewise, a terrifying dream of being stabbed or killed often reveals the presence of a spirit of fear from which one needs deliverance (see Tim 1:7, Heb 2:14-15) The very word used to describe such a dream, nightmare, means a dream given by a monster or demon.(pg 15)

Well, in dream work I have done, we understand this sort of dream to be about a part of oneself that is killing off another part of oneself. The dream is understood to be about maturation and growth. I will say that I agree with Milligan that it is a terrifying dream and that prayer is useful to overcome the fears. But I am just not sure that these dreams come from demons. Letting go of the old self and growing into the new self is not demonic, if one is growing in Christ.

Now Milligan also tells a specific example of a woman's nightmare that he says did come from God. As he looked at a repeating theme in the nightmare, he saw that it was telling her to revisit a situation from her past (when she had been involved n the occult). He says "When she asked God's forgiveness and renounced her involvement with the occult, her entire life changed dramatically." Here, he attributes the dream to God, but there is still an occult angle.

Perhaps this emphasis would be reassuring to Christians who are afraid of dreams because of fears of witchcraft and the occult. Such Christians can read this book knowing that Milligan is not attracted to the occult.

Milligan shares some dream theory with, of all people, Freud. They are the only dream theorists I know of that advocate the idea that dreams are deliberately coded to hide their meanings. Freud believed that the dreams originated with wishes that were then distorted and censored to disguise their antisocial nature. Milligan believes that dreams originating from God are deliberately coded to disguise their holy nature.

God will use names that rhyme, puns, riddles, proverbs, almost anything imaginable to hide the truth from our "old man" when he speaks to us in the night.

For both Freud and Milligan, the dreams were disguised from our public social selves, but for very different reasons.

I strongly disagree with both Freud and Milligan on this. Yes, the dreams do use "rhyme, puns, riddles, proverbs, almost anything imaginable", but it is to break through and communicate, not to be obscure.

Jane Hamon's "Dreams and Visions" -- How the Charismatic Church Does Dreamwork

I have just finished reading "Dreams and Visions: Understanding Your Dreams and how God Can Use Then to Speak to You Today," by Jane Hamon. I was pleasantly surprised by the degree of alignment with the contemporary liberal/ mainline dreamwork tradition. I thought this was a good integration of the ideas of Morton Kelsey, John Sanford and Jeremy Taylor with an emphasis on the importance of conformity to Scripture.

As well as her emphasis on the Word of God in Holy Scripture, she differs from the liberal/ mainline in cautioning people about sharing their dreams. I think there is wisdom in this. I do lead dream groups and we do benefit from sharing the dreams in the group. However, this requires experienced leadership and I like to have co-leaders, so that two people are responsible for maintaining the safety of the group.

The benefits I see in group dream work are the building of community, the learning by experience about "projection", and the decoding of the symbolism. As Jeremy Taylor (a D. Min in the Unitarian Universalist Church) says, "The dreamer is uniquely blind to the meaning of his or her own dream." However, when the dream's meaning is suggested by others, the dreamer will have what Jeremy calls the "aha!" moment. As he puts it in his Basic Dream Work Tool Kit:

Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dream may have. This certainty usually comes in the form of a wordless "aha!" of recognition, and is the only reliable touchstone of dream work.

Hamon makes what I perceive as the similar point, but ascribes the "aha!" to the work of God and the Holy Spirit:

Whatever symbols appear in a dream, they must be either interpreted by the Holy Spirit or analyzed in light of the dreamer's experience and not solely by an interpretation imposed by another individual. Never impose your interpretation of a symbol on another if the dreamer does not bear witness to it. God will give the dreamer assurance and peace when the proper representation if the symbol is found.(pg 150)

Hamon's emphasis on caution regarding sharing dreams with others may be based on the dynamics of prophetic, charismatic churches. Her words suggest that people in these charismatic churches may use their dreams to accuse others (and even challenge the leadership of the churches -- see pg. 170).

This is the area where people tend to make the most mistakes in responding to their dreams. While God does in fact sometimes give us dreams regarding others, it is imperative that we use extra caution in responding to such dreams. As we have seen, many times when you dream of of other people, you may not be receiving a revelation or message for them; instead you may be actually dreaming about a part of your self.(pg. 166)

As implied here, Hamon has developed in the book a Christian charismatic presentation of the idea that the characters in a dream represent the parts of ourselves. At the beginning of the book, she presented a dream about her concerns for her out of control child, that she explains was actually about a part of herself that was immature. She notes how a wrong interpretation would have been to fear for her child, believing the dream was a prophecy about him. Rather, God showed her the area of herself that needed development.

I liked Hamon's book very much because of her emphasis on the Bible and symbolism and especially because of her understanding of the potential for other people in one's dream to be aspects of oneself.
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