A Poem about Jacob and Thoughts for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
St. Aidan's Episcopal ChurchAlexndria, Virginia
July 20, 2014
Angels and Ladders
July 20 for a sermon at St. Aidan’s
So, Jacob had a dream.
Everyone has dreams.
But Jacob’s dream?
Who gets angels and ladders from heaven in their dreams?
I get that hooded stranger….lurking.
I get faces.
Examining faces, hungry faces,
unknown faces I think I might have seen somewhere but can’t quite place,
all pressed against the windows of my little house.
Wanting something.
I wake up with, “Oh my God, what was that?”
Jacob wakes up with, Oh my God…..that was….(gasp)”
Angels and ladders.
Who gets angels and ladders in their dreams?
And God?
Who gets an audience with God in their dreams?
I get a fat baptist preacher.
I’m riding my my bicycle past an old girlfriend’s beat up Datsun convertible which is sitting on blocks in the middle of a field.
The preacher is sitting on my handlebars, riding along as I pedal down the road.
A fat baptist preacher is not God.
Jacob gets angel choruses and heavenly hosts, all assembled for his benefit.
A grand liturgical production.
I get showing up for my ordination
an hour late
only to find that everyone’s gone home except the bishop.
And yes…….I am naked.
And it’s not just angels and ladders and God.
Jacob gets a look at the plan.
Who gets to know what it’s all about?
Who gets that?
All those details, the promises, all that information
bright future all spelled out so clearly.
I, sometimes, get brilliant insights that expand my heart with hope…..and then
disappear around the corner of consciousness with a quick, backward-looking wink
and a wide grin to say,
“Ha! You missed me again.”
And maybe the hardest part is this.
Maybe the hardest part is this…..
All over the world this morning,
in churches from Poughkeepsie to Paris
preachers are explaining to their congregations
exactly what Jacob’s dream was all about.
Cherubim, seraphim, celestial light.
With carefully drawn verbal lines and arrows,
with references to ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic maybe, they go on.
The world is filled with experts,
eager to explain the meaning of Jacob’s dream.
With me it’s,
“Hi John. Good to see you.”
“How’s the week been.”
“Any dreams?”
“Yes?”
“Really.”
“Interesting.”
“Oh, I don’t know John, it’s your dream.”
“What do you think it means?”
Maybe I’m just not ready for angels and ladders.
Not ready for the big picture.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for the little hints.
Maybe glimpses, puzzles and on-going projects are the better way.
It is kind of fascinating, really,
mining the night for what we have probably known forever and have only just forgotten.
Honestly. It’s not so bad.
Sometimes there are smiles
and jokes
and old friends,
and green fields stretching toward forever.
Sometimes I can fly.
And streams run there, streams that flow up and down over hills.
How can they do that?
Maybe I have seen an angel.
Maybe a footprint in the morning of that ladder
pressed into the sod outside my door.
It’s the little sparks that make me wish for Jacob’s fireworks
that leave me hoping there is more.
Knowing there must be more.
I will lay my head upon a feather pillow tonight
and pull its cool softness up around my face.
I will close my eyes…
and maybe, just maybe dream of Jacob,
whose pillow was a stone. JB
I’ve been interested in dreams for a long time. If you had asked me a few years ago about my spiritual director, who it is who helps shepherd my soul, I would have told you about a friend, a Jungian analyst who helped me with my inner path for many years. I still see her once in a while, and she always greets me with the same question, “any dreams?”
My interest in the Jacob and Esau story began long before I had started working in my own dreams, probably before I knew that Jung was pronounced with a “Y” and not a “J” sound. I was intrigued by Jacob who struggled with a part of himself from which he had been separated since birth. Even before I had any concept of the shadow self, I was drawn to this Father of many nations who ran in fear from the wildness of his red, hairy brother to travel an event-filled road that would eventually bring them back together. I think I sensed that such an arc might have something to do with my life.
The theme of estrangement and the journey toward reunion runs through all of our stories. It is the journey from that trouble in the garden at the beginning of our scriptures to the great gathering around the heavenly throne at the end. It is the journey of Israel through the desert and of Israel into and out of exile. It is the path of the prodigal son.
I love the dreams in the Jacob and Esau saga because they spell out that the journey from separation to reunion has to do with an inner journey.
We don’t always speak about our inner work, maybe because we are all still daunted by the scope of the project, I know that is true for me, but that good work is the stuff of life. We have pointed our telescopes at the sky and numbered and mapped the stars….our inner worlds are still a mystery to us, as ripe for the instruction of powerful stories and myths as the constellations once were. Becoming our best possible selves is what we were put here to do. The longer I live in this tradition of ours, the more I realize that it has little to do with belief. Believing/offering our hearts is just the beginning of walking this way of ours. The real work comes into focus as we learn to listen to that inner teacher who speaks to us in ritual, in our dreams and quiet moments, and in rich, symbolic stories like this story of Jacob and his angels.
The Jacob and Esau story is not always pretty. It begins in selfishness and greed and deception, and moves through fear and struggle. Maybe that is why I find it compelling. Like any good story, it moves……from its very human beginning…..through the fear….through the struggles….toward its resolution. It is that ending, I think, that first drew me to the story for it is the ending that gives us courage, that turns all the rest into promise. We get the Jacob story for four weeks this year, but we don’t get the best part. Let tell you how it all turns out. After a lifetime of running in fear from his brother, after all his dreams and adventures, this is what we hear…….
And you know…. as I think about it now, maybe this story is one of those ladders into heaven we heard about. Maybe it is in stories faithfully lived to their finish that we hear the angels.
Who gets angels and ladders?
Maybe everyone does.
JB
July 20 for a sermon at St. Aidan’s
Everyone has dreams.
But Jacob’s dream?
Who gets angels and ladders from heaven in their dreams?
I get faces.
Examining faces, hungry faces,
unknown faces I think I might have seen somewhere but can’t quite place,
all pressed against the windows of my little house.
Wanting something.
Jacob wakes up with, Oh my God…..that was….(gasp)”
Who gets angels and ladders in their dreams?
Who gets an audience with God in their dreams?
I get a fat baptist preacher.
I’m riding my my bicycle past an old girlfriend’s beat up Datsun convertible which is sitting on blocks in the middle of a field.
The preacher is sitting on my handlebars, riding along as I pedal down the road.
A fat baptist preacher is not God.
A grand liturgical production.
I get showing up for my ordination
an hour late
only to find that everyone’s gone home except the bishop.
And yes…….I am naked.
Jacob gets a look at the plan.
Who gets to know what it’s all about?
Who gets that?
All those details, the promises, all that information
bright future all spelled out so clearly.
I, sometimes, get brilliant insights that expand my heart with hope…..and then
disappear around the corner of consciousness with a quick, backward-looking wink
and a wide grin to say,
“Ha! You missed me again.”
Maybe the hardest part is this…..
All over the world this morning,
in churches from Poughkeepsie to Paris
preachers are explaining to their congregations
exactly what Jacob’s dream was all about.
Cherubim, seraphim, celestial light.
With carefully drawn verbal lines and arrows,
with references to ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic maybe, they go on.
The world is filled with experts,
eager to explain the meaning of Jacob’s dream.
“Hi John. Good to see you.”
“How’s the week been.”
“Any dreams?”
“Yes?”
“Really.”
“Interesting.”
“Oh, I don’t know John, it’s your dream.”
“What do you think it means?”
Not ready for the big picture.
Maybe glimpses, puzzles and on-going projects are the better way.
It is kind of fascinating, really,
mining the night for what we have probably known forever and have only just forgotten.
and jokes
and old friends,
and green fields stretching toward forever.
Sometimes I can fly.
And streams run there, streams that flow up and down over hills.
How can they do that?
Maybe a footprint in the morning of that ladder
pressed into the sod outside my door.
that leave me hoping there is more.
Knowing there must be more.
and pull its cool softness up around my face.
I will close my eyes…
whose pillow was a stone. JB
We don’t always speak about our inner work, maybe because we are all still daunted by the scope of the project, I know that is true for me, but that good work is the stuff of life. We have pointed our telescopes at the sky and numbered and mapped the stars….our inner worlds are still a mystery to us, as ripe for the instruction of powerful stories and myths as the constellations once were. Becoming our best possible selves is what we were put here to do. The longer I live in this tradition of ours, the more I realize that it has little to do with belief. Believing/offering our hearts is just the beginning of walking this way of ours. The real work comes into focus as we learn to listen to that inner teacher who speaks to us in ritual, in our dreams and quiet moments, and in rich, symbolic stories like this story of Jacob and his angels.
The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, the one who promised to kill you, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed;…… And Jacob divided his family and his herds so some part of what he had might be saved, and then Jacob went out to meet Esau. But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.
Tears, reconciliation, the healing of what was broken, rejoicing, surely these are the hope of all our best stories. Surely that is what is meant by salvation. It is certainly my favorite part of this story. Who gets angels and ladders?
Maybe everyone does.
JB
