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“Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. — Langston Hughes
I wake to a morning sky parfait, though I am unaware of it.
Instead, wrapped in my own private world, I’m focused on my unloaded dreams — where is that new dream journal? Before I can find the missing journal, I look out the back door to instead find a red-orange horizon resting under dark blue canvas resting under a striped double ribbon of true orange against true blue. The ribbon fades and swirls until it’s topped with Dreamsicle Orange. I devour this rare and lovely morning treat. Soon, the rising sun will melt its beauty.
Dreams melt away just as quickly. If I don’t record my dreams on paper in those first waking-up minutes, they slip back to wherever dreams live, buried deep under the more comfining thoughts of everyday life. 
So most days, even before I get out of bed, I grab my journal to record my freshly minted dreams. Weighting the strange disjointed images with words keeps dreams alive, so that I can ponder the images and messages under daylight.
What do our dreams tell us? Why am I investing part of Lenten morning devotion towards dream work? Oh, I have my reasons — three good ones, in fact.
The first is that my spiritual director invited me to take a look at my dreams for answers I’ve been seeking.
Then there’s this quote I ran across in a book I’m reading — Clyde H. Reid’s Dreams — Discovering Your Inner Teacher — that’s part of my spiritual direction coursework:
“Our dreams can show us who we are. In fact, they can sometimes show us ourselves unmercifully. If we really want to know ourselves in the deepest ways, we need to record and study our dreams carefully.”
Reading Reid’s words reminded me of a final reason, an invitation I heard from Pulitzer prize-winning author, Marilynne Robinson, a couple of years back, when she was here in Oklahoma to speak at one of our local universities. “Descend into self to write– discover your primary self — the beautiful, the true; it’s preparation for writing words worth saying.”
Though Reid’s book assures that dreams are not terribly hard to interpret — as long as we remember and record them in a sufficient level of detail — the hard part is remembering them. Every night I go to sleep asking God to help me remember. About half of the time I do . And oh, as I spill out dreams on paper, have I noticed some familiar faces — Ms. Perfect and Ms. Workaholic and Ms. Low Self-esteem — while comically wrestling with concerns that consume my waking hours.
My dreams are like an old Hollywood movie that jerks along with missing frames and little plot. Sitting in a darkened theater, I watch my dreams play out. I do not direct the scenes in which I am both actor and audience. Instead, my dream spins off the reel unfiltered, a poor sort of improvisational comedy. One scene leads to another — personal worlds collide — past, present and future merge and swirl as the dead and alive keep each other company.
Dreams are a brave new world of unedited truth. But under the dreams and under the truth, I believe, is a God that lies at the horizon between humus earth and the heavens, a God whose red hot love waits to burn up all the lies, known and unknown, that have become part of who I believe I am — but am not. Somewhere in my dreams, waits a God with the keys of true blue to set me free… … so that I can soar with childish abandon and joy that comes from keeping company with Dreamsicles.
an everyday life 
Thank you for this inspiring piece, Janell. This is a poem I cherished in my younger days, but seems to have been buried somewhere along the sideline of life. I’ve appreciated your analogies of dreams too, especially the one about old movies… I sure can relate to that one, as I’ve practically grown up with films. Your post just reminds me that we should be more concerned about new productions than reminiscing old worn-out ones… albeit the two could well be different points on a continuum under the guiding hands of an omnipresent Director.
Arti,
Thank you.
My father grew up with films as well — when Daddy wasn’t watching one of his old movies, he was lost in a dream. This apple of my father’s eye did not fall far from the tree.
Reading your final words — “the guiding hands of an omnipresent Director” — made me stop and wonder how often I really allow myself to be guided by this omniscient Other who is not confined by the limits of time. I fear not nearly enough.
I don’t quite live life in the repeating scenes of a movie like Groundhog Day, but my dreams certainly share enough common threads that I appear to live life walking in ever widening circles rather than anything close to a straight line. I suppose a circular path is still “different points on a continuum,” though your words initially led me to think of a ladder where one step leads to another.
How much confidently we climb when a ladder in anchored on the ground with each rung strong and secure — but in the case where all rungs are not strong footholds, succeeding rungs and steps up the ladder are shaky and compromised.
To use the ladder analogy, I fear I’ve climbed the ladder of life with some weak lower treads. To continue to climb, to continue to grow, I find it helpful to rewind life, to study certain parts of it, to see whether there is some obstacle, some lie, that keeps me from taking the next step.
It’s the same with watching movies — for how often I’ve re-watch a film to see some new message, some new scene or nuance that I missed the first time around! Life happens so quick — and so much of my life happened while I was asleep on the job — when I was up to my neck in career and raising family, when all I could do was fall in bed at night too tired to think about what I was doing or where I was going.
Too much good gets buried and lost along the way of life. But, slowly, ever so slowly, it’s good to wake up to reality, to re-discover old friends and make new ones.
Arti — I’m glad for your visit.
Janell