A Trip Through the Darkness

Dear Friend,

Some years ago, while exploring a collection of contemporary American poetry, I came across a poem by Theodore Roethke called “The Waking”.  Here are the final lines:

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow,

I learn by going where I have to go. 

I was immediately intrigued by the convergence of sleeping, waking, and going forward in life - with overtones of a dream. No surprise that Roethke’s words came to mind as I pondered Luke’s account of the Transfiguration, this Sunday’s Gospel.  Peter, John, and James are “overcome by sleep” and then become “fully awake” and then enter “a cloud” that brings on fear. In our first reading from Genesis, Abram too, is caught up in something similar, a “trance” and a terrifying darkness.

Is it part of life’s journey that we must at times enter the darkness before we can really see the light? On a recent morning, I woke from a dream in which I was the passenger in a car in San Francisco. The driver steered the car into a pool of water - a fountain, a pond, or a small lake, I’m not sure which. Later in the dream I saw the remnant of the car in a garage. I had survived the underwater passage, but the car had not. It was a shell, no longer workable.

The truth of Jesus’s identity - and our own - and the profound covenant of love extended to us from God are realities hidden by my ordinary way of seeing the world. Our Lenten journey and our Synod renewal might well require a trip through darkness, toward awakening, and the experience of “unknowing” before embracing God’s will for us, and boldly walking the path of Jesus together.  

So... had any good dreams lately?

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor