By Carol
Friend Marcelle Martin from Swarthmore Meeting in Pennsylvania has gifted the Pendle Hill pamphlet she wrote on finding spiritual guidance in our dreams to “Dreia (Andre) and Memphis Meeting.” She found inspiration in the spiritual discoveries, radical theology, and collective faithfulness of the first generation of Quakers and reminds us that the same spirit speaks to our condition here and now as well.
During an annual visit to us last year, Andre reignited a dream group he had introduced us to a few years before. Five Friends have met every month since then to explore how to find meaning in our dreams: Matt, Ann S., Khyber, Melissa, and Carol. We began by sharing narratives of our dreams and receiving feedback from the group. We soon branched out into how our dreaming lives differ from our waking lives and we are still working on how to remember dreams and how to interpret them.
In her pamphlet, Marcelle reminds us that our dreams are a portal to our inner lives, to the tender aspects of ourselves. She says that her own dreams taught her that time is more fluid than she imagined and that attending to her dreams helped lead her to Quaker Meeting. Researching historical accounts of dreams, she discovered that early Friends saw dreams as a way to be in touch with continuing revelation. Through workshops and essays she is reminding 21st century Friends of the practice of collectively attending to our dreams.
A detailed look at how early Friends interacted with their dreams can be found in the book Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture by Carla Gerona; Khyber has donated it to our library. It is shelved under Quaker History in bookcase #1.
Dream Sharing Groups are best kept very small, so if others in our meeting are interested, we might consider how to set up one or two more small groups who get together on their own schedule to do this work. Like silent worship, the practice seems almost too simple to be consequential, but those who have experienced either know they are.