A ‘Net list-friend wrote:

After looking at the O.T. reading for this Sunday – the story of Jacob’s ladder – I started to think about the place of dreams in our understanding of, and experience of, God.

Dreams seem to be an aspect of human imagination and imagination has had a lot of bad press. “It’s all in your imagination!”, is usually a way of saying the contents of imagination is fictitious. I have had friends from third world countries who have taken dreams very seriously – and in a way that many Westerners would regard as superstitious.

Westerners usually approach dreams from the angle of psychology where they have been regarded as expressions of wish-fulfilment (Freud), or the mind sorting itself out.

Do dreams and imagination have a role to play in our experience of divine reality? While imagination has received bad press, it yet has played a very creative role in the development of the modern world. Many aspects of fiction appear ultimately as reality, as people work toward putting their dreams into reality.

As I read of Jacob’s dream my mind fills with the words of a song known to people of my generation – “climbing a stairway to heaven”. It used to resound through the Student Union building at Sydney University as I made my way to lectures on many a morning. Jacob’s stairway may not be the way our minds conceive of the inter-penetration of the divine and human worlds. Perhaps we would think of a “wormhole” between the divine and human worlds – or is that just the Christian Faith for Trekkies?

Anyway, what do you think of such dreams?

My response: Have you Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled) on dreams? Compelling stuff, I think…

I’ve spoken to clergy conferences in about 30 countries. When I’ve asked ‘How many of you received a call to pastoral ministry primarily through a dream or vision?’ the _majority_ of those with dark skins will raise their hands; only a very small minority of those with lighter skins will raise theirs…

(Fortunately the majority of Christian missionaries now, worlwide, have darker skins 🙂

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher