Dream retreat

I am in the middle of a dream retreat. It is early in the morning and I am awake but the others are still dreaming. I do not remember my dreams except the presence of a dear friend in them.

This morning some dreams will be reported in great detail, some will be elusive images, and some will leave no trace in the memory but what will happen is this: the dreams will speak to each other and they will speak to us. We will be informed, entertained, instructed. Common themes will emerge in our dreams and we will be found in each other’s dreams. We will dream for each other. The images will unfold, reveal themselves as clever, compact stories in themselves. The detailed dramas will have surprising and unsurprising points to make

Already we have had one night of dreaming and this has happened. I have led this kind of retreat several times and it has always happened. The Dreamgiver is reliable. Ask together and you shall receive.

I only do this because of long experience and observation. When people gather in one place, things happen in their dreams. You don’t know this, of course, unless you report your dreams to each other. The thing to do is to start speaking of your dreams.

Years ago I began writing to a close friend who had moved away. Our correspondence had the immediacy of email and the detail of letters. We continued a practice we had started in person, talking about our dreams. After a few months of correspondence the letters became almost entirely about dreams because that is where the drama of our lives was playing out. And our dreams became intertwined, instructive and descriptive not only to us as individuals but to each other and then to the church community of which we were a part. And who knows, perhaps even to the world.

I have tried to write a book about this but the story is as elusive as a dream. I can’t quite do it justice. Meanwhile, however, it continues in many forms, not only with this friend but with other communities and individuals to whom we are connected. Powerful dreaming has been discovered, uncovered, and prompted in some way by our dream partnership and the way we have woven it into our lives and experience. But I wouldn’t say the two of us have caused anything to happen. Rather, we have tapped into something.

See, it’s elusive. It’s hard to describe. I can’t begin, in my favorite 500-word form, to do it justice.

But my current chapter in the story includes these dream retreats that I now offer to groups of trusted friends. (Trust is important because the boundaries between people are permeable when you dream together.)

On the first night of this retreat we requested the presence of the feminine Divine and she came, believe me, she came. One by one my friends are now waking up and we prepare to break the silence of the night with a report of the second installment of our dreams.

The single image I retained from my dreams of the first night says it all: it was of a curtain of snow, with points here and there as if beings on the other side were trying to poke through.

The veil is thin. The Divine tries to get through. Dreams, when our defenses and boundaries are down, offer access.