
I woke up and thought -- the ten plagues. [See Exodus, the second book in the Bible. The Prince of Egypt was based on it.] Then I remembered, last month in Costa Rica I woke up one morning from a dream and thought -- the ten plagues. I don't remember which plague that one was. Frogs? Blood? It wasn't the deaths of the first-born. I would remember that, being one myself.
I get these dream series every so often. For a couple years before I went back to school, I dreamed about vehicles that broke down. The tire went flat, the axle broke, the runner fell off the sled... The first couple years of my current episode, I dreamed of a young man. I thought his name was Steve. I thought he was my depression, though he didn't like it when I called him that. He always felt threatening in some way. Then I took a leave of absence from work and learned to work with my dreams. And in the end, he was always helpful.
I don't remember ever having a series of good dreams. Why is that?
This morning I told Helen about my dream. Helen is a spiritual director, and her favorite thing is dream work. She said, "If you have a bad dream and do dream work with it, you allow it to be instructive and productive, grace-filled and gift. If you don't do dream work with it, it will continue to feel like just a bad dream."
That proved true with Steve. So I did a bit of work. I carried the story forward. I wonder which plague comes next.
Let this woman go!
photo in public domain
I wonder if Steve will show up again as the Orkin Man. (Sorry to sound flip about this, but in dreams, anything can happen.)
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