Johnson: Inner Works

“All forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors—dream, vision, ritual, religious experience—are largely lost, dismissed by the modern mind as primitive or superstitious. In our hubris, our faith in our unassailable reason, cuts ourselves off from our origins in the unconscious and from the deepest parts of ourselves.” —Robert Johnson in Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth (Harper & Row, 1989).

My spiritual director posted this quote on Facebook today. It is an affirmation for a new path that a group of us are beginning again. Our book group is rereading the revised version of Joyce Rockwood Hudson’s Natural Spirituality. We recently were in a clergy group and announced that we were studying Natural Spirituality. Two members who had recently finished seminary had no idea what we were talking about. When we mentioned dream work, they were even more in the dark, and maybe a little suspicious. Older clergy in the group had been studying dreams for some time and affirmed the value of the study.

I have been involved in dream groups on and off for more than thirty years. Dream work is one of the many ways to try to discern what God is calling us to do in our lives. My experience is that it is important to participate in a group of people studying their own and each other’s dreams. Most of us find it difficult to discern dreams by ourselves.

There are many factors to consider. Dreams tell us something we don’t already know. Parts of ourselves may block new information.

Think of our experience in other discussion groups when new ideas come up. There is invariably at least one person who flings out an automatic “no” to a new way of doing things. “That is not the way we have done it in the past.”

It always takes time for the whole group to process the information and decide to go in a new direction. Likewise, a dream group of friends looking at a dream from outside of our own ego may gently guide us in a new direction. We look for these insights into our inner life until the light bulb turns on inside and outside of us. I like Joyce Rockwood Hudson’s subtitle of her book, A Handbook for Jungian Inner Work in Spiritual Community.

Joanna joannaseibert

Early Riser

“Wisdom is radiant and unfading,

and she is easily discerned by those who love her,

and is found by those who seek her.

She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.

One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,

for she will be found sitting at the gate.” —Wisdom 6:12-14.

jes campbell

Many of the spiritual friends I know are indeed early risers. Early morning is their time to read or meditate or write before the business of the day begins. I used to walk around our neighborhood in the early morning before going to the hospital to work. Now I look out of a large picture window and watch and wait for the sun to come up and the cardinals and blue jays and woodpeckers to appear at my feeder.

At the beach, I like to sit outside and feel night becoming day. I like to feel the Gulf breeze and watch the water creatures gather to begin their day. This is their home. They are local. I am a visitor. The lone osprey circles high above the waves. The single blue heron swoops in and slowly struts on his stilts to be as near as possible to the early morning fishermen at the edge of the Gulf, hoping he will be given their small rejections. The pelicans fly in military formation so close to the waves that they must constantly get their feathers wet.

The early risers are like the women at the empty tomb on Easter morning. They are seeking resurrection, a new beginning—and they will find it every day as the sun majestically rises above the horizon with its color guard, especially on Sunday mornings.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Miracles

“A cancer inexplicably cured. A voice in a dream. It is possible to look at most miracles and find a rational explanation in terms of natural cause and effect. It is possible to look at Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus and find a rational explanation in terms of paint and canvas.”—Frederick Buechner in Beyond Words (HarperOne, 2009).

Caravaggio . The supper ar Emmaus

I believe in miracles. Once a week I step into a room full of people who are themselves miracles. It is a 12-step recovery group of people who once were crippled by an addiction and now are “happy, joyous and free.” They talk about what it was like then and what it is like now. I have heard some of their stories hundreds of times; but each time I see a few more similarities to my own story and identify more closely with theirs. Sometimes a person’s story is so similar to mine that I think: That IS my story. The differences begin to blur. Everyone in the room is a miracle, and I realize that I am as well. And so, each time, I leave that place profoundly grateful.

I see other miracles every day. Someone calls or comes for a visit. I just listen and listen. In my mind, I have no idea what to say. Sometimes words come out of my mouth that seem to help my friend. I am in the dark as to where a particular idea might have come from. I know that its flashing into my mind was a miracle not of my own making. Some would call it the Spirit working in our lives.

I see people living for many years through cancers that in the past would have killed them in months. These are all miracles. Indeed, people who find cures are miracle workers. Often they have been inspired by seeing patients die of a certain disease, and they are determined not to experience that again.

I remember a conversation with my grandmother when I was a junior in medical school and we were riding together in the back seat of a car. She told me that she could not understand how people aren’t convinced of miracles when they see a newborn baby. I just smiled, but in my mind I was thinking: “Grandmother, I know how babies develop. I know all the secrets and the stages of how they come to be born. These are all facts of science.”

Now, fifty years later, as I have seen so many sick newborns, I know my grandmother is right. The birth of every baby is a miracle.

I also know what Buechner is talking about when we see Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus at the Louvre in Paris. Rembrandt has captured the miracle. So many other works of art qualify as miracles as well. They connect us to the God of our understanding: Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg; Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus in the National Gallery in London; Georges de La Tour’s The Repentant Magdalen at the National Gallery in Washington, D. C.

Buechner challenges us to remember the many works of art that speak individually to us and to look at them anew. Do we recognize the miracles offered to us in art books—or even better, might we plan a pilgrimage to go see these masterpieces for ourselves that we are learning are miracles?

Joanna joannaseibert.com