NOVEMBER 3 2018
DREAMS
Last week I, 90 years old, had a dream that centered on an event that my subconscious told me happened close to 70 years ago. The curious aspect of this dream was that this was the second time that I visualized myself as a 22 year old, engaged to be married, worried that I would ever earn enough to support a family.
I dreamed that scenario even though I, since then, had been a successful entrepreneur, starting a career from life insurance to general insurance, from real estate broker to professional Real Estate appraiser, specializing in commercial and industrial properties.
This dream brought me back to a time when I had completed 14 years of schooling, mostly academic stuff, had just been discharged from the Dutch army, as an infantry sergeant, but had really no marketable skills at all, and, in my dream, I desperately wondered how I would ever translate these experiences into some sort of a career.
I cannot recall that these thoughts ever bothered me at the time. I am now sure that this lingering uncertainty about my future life gave me the impetus to emigrate to Canada, then very much in vogue, especially in the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands, Groningen and Friesland.
Lately another dream, also dealing with the past, had popped up in my mind. Three years before that, when my wife and I were dating, she broke off the relationship. Apparently this affected me so much that even now I dreamed that I was biking past her house, only some 300 m from where I lived, hoping to get a glimpse of her. That dream too occurred a few times.
These nightly happenings made me curious, and I started to read a book I have by Carl S. Jung, probably the world’s most famous authority on dreams. His 73 page essay had as heading, The Approach of the Unconscious, with the subheading, The Importance of dreams.
I am not capable to give an explanation of my dreams. I suspect that in my old age suppressed feelings are emerging, perhaps a kind of mind-house cleaning.
The result of these current dreams was that I started to read, not only Carl Jung, but also other authors. From Dr. Jung I learned the concept of “Misoneism”, a term I have never encountered before, meaning “a profound and superstitious fear for something new”. This gave me the impetus to make a note in Jung’s book on the margin: “Is Jesus’ promise to make everything new, including Creation a subject of fear for many believing Christians?”
The other two persons I consulted were Thomas Berry and MLK, Martin Luther King.
First Berry and his “The dream of the earth”.
Berry was a Catholic priest who wrote THE DREAM OF THE EARTH.
I expected some biblical givens here, but was very much disappointed. He never mentions God or Jesus, never refers to creation or fall, never points to the evil one or Christ’s redemptive acts.
However, he correctly implies something that J.H. Bavinck also states that, “The End is in the Beginning,” and quotes with approval E.O. Wilson of Harvard, who said, “Scientific analysis points, curiously, toward the need for a quasi-religious transformation of contemporary cultures,” without commenting on this. Berry’s own suggestion is that we must return far beyond recorded history: “going back to the genetic imperative from which human cultures emerged originally”. Bavinck called this “THE URZEIT,” the Primeval – prehistoric – era, primordial time, that preceded the time when humanity began life on earth. Bavinck writes: “This “Urzeit” was the time when all things were put in place. What happened then became the measure for everything that would happen afterwards. In that era the basis was laid upon which all subsequent events rest.”
MLK, Martin Luther King, in his now famous speech, I HAVE A DREAM, gives a totally different picture. Here is part of his historic sermon:
“I have a dream today … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted. (MLK then quotes Isaiah 40):
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.
A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the LORD;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.”
His speech continues,
“This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be fine one day.”
So far MLK.
I too have a dream.
I have written a book which really is a dream in its entirety. The section below is based on Matthew 26: 29, “I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
In the episode which follows below, I envision a possible scenario, where Jesus implements the promise he made at the Last Supper. There he renews the Covenant with both humanity and all living matter, as outlined in Genesis 9, guaranteeing perfect life for all humans, all animals, all trees, all bacteria and insects, all microbes and fungi, every virus and amoeba, all protozoa and algae, forever freed from the curse Adam had brought upon creation. There is fulfilled the promise made at The Last Supper that He would not drink wine again until He would be united with His sisters and brothers and all creation in the Father’s kingdom, his so well ordered cosmos for which He had sacrificed his life.
Here is that dream:
“That moment has now arrived. The complete common-union is now to start. The marriage ceremony is about to begin and the sealing of the new and final Covenant is about to take place. Immanuel’s presence is everywhere, His mind penetrates all and our minds connect with His. All non-human living things, relieved of their groaning as in childbirth, joyfully embrace the birth of the New Creation. I see the trees stretch out their branches, as in prayer, the leaves vibrate in joyful expectation and the flowers sway in unison, even though there is no breeze. I see birds and all sorts of animals concentrate on Jesus in devout expectation.
The Son of Man, Immanuel. God everywhere.
Jesus rises above the crowd, His hands raised in a blessing. Gradually the singing subsides as slowly the music ceases. In the background a lonely bird continues its tune, asserting its independence. Jesus, smiling, begins to speak.
I am sitting on a rock, leaning against a tree, my arms neatly folded, as though I am again a kid in school, my eyes glued to my teacher. Jesus addresses creation and I know that what He conveys to me and the way I interpret it is all one experience. There is no possibility of misunderstanding or wrong explanation.
Jesus speaks to us and to all creation, a sermon without sound, a message without human words, transmitting ideas and concepts equally understandable to tree and human alike. He implants His love into the very core of the life of each woman and man, in fish and fowl, in plant and herbivore. Jesus imparts his love into all created matters, into the entire new creation, while holding up a chalice full of foaming wine.
My mind, starting to fill with His mind, receives a beginning of understanding the universal scope of our undertaking and the momentous magnitude of our mission. I feel the reaction of the tree against which I am leaning in the form of a slight shock of affirmation. I sense the approval of the earth in the faint vibrating of the rock on which my body rests.
A hush has fallen over the New Creation. All eyes are glued to the Son of Man, Who now raises both His hands, while holding that large golden cup full of freshly poured wine. In an instant we all have a long-stemmed, crystal wineglass in our hands, also filled to the brim with the fruit of the vine, formerly pressed by the human sole, now a symbol of the new human soul, creation’s most joyful gift to life. My glass is supplied by Cornelius, who is gone the next instant. It flashes through my mind that I am not the only person he looks after.
“A toast,” Jesus says, His voice echoing through the Universe, “a toast to you who have completed your journey and now are about to start a new life, a life of slowly and ever more intimately becoming united with the cosmos, God’s world, bought with my blood, of which this wine is a token. A toast to Our Father, Creator, who made this all possible through Me, the Lamb of God.”
We, radiating His smile, raise our cups to acknowledge the God-Creator. The Son of Man drinks from His cup. He then gently pours some wine on the earth, and also into the air, as birds everywhere circle around Him in perfectly maintained concentric circles.
We all drink from our precious glasses filled with a red wine so delicious that it fills us with an even greater sense of wellbeing. It is amazing that, just as His earthly ministry started at the wedding feast in Cana, so now our first encounter with Him is also a wedding feast, this time our wedding feast, the uniting of the saints of the Body of Christ with his New Creation.
Freely flows the wine which gladdens our hearts even more. A song from my schooldays plays through my brain: “lo vivat, io vivat, nostrorum sanitas. Hoc est amoris poculum, doloris est antidotum. lo vivat, io vivat, nostrorum sanitas.” Here the wine is indeed something which will make us live, which will increase our wellbeing. The cup is most certainly the cup of love, of the greatest love ever; no longer is it an antidote for sorrow or grief.”
End of that quote from my book, DAY WITHOUT END, of which an electronic copy is available upon request. (Already a group near Ottawa, Ontario is discussing this book).
A dream shattered.
Today we experience world-wide chaos, augmented by President Trump’s remorselessly cynical, jungle-style vision of how to conduct business and politics, which is ripping apart a society already impacted by generational, demographic, and emotional stress.
What we NOW are experiencing are the birth pangs outlines in Romans 8 verses 19-25. Welcome them!
Consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to son-ship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
We must have dreams. The beauty of biblical dreams is that they come true.