I feel like writing about dreams today.
Dreams…spiritual and natural dreams…and their possible interpretations.
This piece may be a little risky…I imagine writing about this may open me up to join the ranks of those in a number of possible positive or negative categories.
I guess I’m feeling a little risky today.
So, what is new?!
When I observe myself sometimes, I recognize that I take a number of (mostly calculated) risks.
And of the bigger ones of my life, I observe different positive, negative and mostly, mixed, outcomes.
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While dreaming is a common, necessary and inevitable human experience it seems that in modern times the subject has become viewed through a number of other lenses ranging from that of pure biological (and dismissive) science to that of the psychologically disturbed to that of the superstitious.
There seems to now be an online and otherwise plethora of information available to interpret one’s dreams as well as other waking signs and symbols in one’s life experiences, some bordering on mysticism (and I mean in a negative category, because I maintain that the Christian faith is, essentially, that of which much is unarguably supernatural in nature, so, mystical, but in the good sense) to time-tested, multi-cultural consensuses (yeah I had to looked that word up) on certain common dream symbols and themes.
I suspect that when dreams are mentioned in the Bible, their interpretation and references were likely influenced and framed by their own and surrounding cultures, traditions and beliefs. That is, their place and interpretive methods weren’t pulled out of thin air.
It is obvious but worth noting that for Christians, the Bible is filled with the mention of dreams and their interpretations (and I’m sure places of non-interpretations) as though it is absolutely normal to consider the meaning of one’s dreams. And not only normal, but in some cases these are not only revelatory to the person or others in some matter, but are then acted upon as directive.
Let that sink in, in the year 2021.
But I don’t think this is associated with just Christianity, Judaism and Isalm but with likely any set of beliefs in human religious groups. Even atheists probably give thought to their dreams, because it is so basic to being human.
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In biblical reference, mentions of dreams that most immediately come to me (off the top of my head, before I look up the references) are:
- Joseph’s dream shared with his brothers which led to his being sold by them into slavery
2. Joseph interpreting the dream of the cupbearer and baker and then Pharoah’s dream
3. The man in Isaiah that went crazy and ate grass (yes, I need to look this one up to recall the details)….well I got THAT one wrong…book of Daniel...oh yes, Nebuchadnezzar…..I just remember that part about him going mad and eating grass! Kind of unforgettable in my distant reservoir. What was the reason for Nebuchadnezzar’s madness? (BibleAsk)
4. Joseph’s dream surrounding birth of Jesus
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In Acts, there is a reference that your “old men will dream dreams and your young men see visions.”
So without delving into whatever that meant or means or why it was written, it introduces some other potential layers, too…such as….
…what distinguishes a dream from a vision?
…is a vision something supernatural that occurs in a waking state?
..is a spiritual dream (as opposed to the natural dream (one we can trace back to eating heartburn-inducing food before sleep or being naturally preoccupied with one’s day activities…) some sort of vision that occurs during a night-time dream?
Oh and then, the idea of the prophetic. Are some dreams revelatory in some way and are some dreams actually warnings or directives of some sort?
I don’t exactly know.
What do you think?
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I ponder this initially because in my longer ago, past personal religious history I have been associated with a few churches that would label themselves somewhere on the spectrum of charismatic, meaning they believed and practiced various supernatural giftings as they interpreted and found described in various biblical references.
For the better or for worse, as one might say….and because I’ve seen and experienced a variety and continuum of both positive and negative in this regard….I should continue my “for better or worse metaphoric reference” by saying I am not married to any one view of dreams and their interpretations although I quip that I am certainly intellectually and spiritually engaged to the belief that our dreams are important and I believe they do hold powerful meanings, comfort and guidance at times, when we pay them proper, reasonable (both rational and spiritual) attention.
Regardless of whether we believe our dreams originate entirely from our natural experiences and psyche or otherwise, it would seem at least sometimes, there is value in them.
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As I mentioned at the start of this piece, this belief of mine (and my subsequent sharing) may in fact incline the reader to put me into some type of category, either positive, negative or…mixed! Hopefully, this piece will prompt and encourage any readers to think more about their own dreams they may have from time to time…that is…not every little strange dream each night but the ones where we wake up with a sense of going over and over a dream in our mind.
In my experience, of the thousands upon thousands of dreams I must have dreamed during my fifty-eight years I probably have a handful – maybe 25 to 50ish, I really don’t know – that stand out to me as memorable and begging contemplation.
A few were actual nightmares, and in those cases I think they definitely were connected to psychological fears I was processing during very difficult times in my life. One such dream – probably the very worst nightmare I’ve ever had – came sometime in the spring of 1981, as I recall. This was within two years of my father’s death and although the dream was not specifically about my father, the intense plot and content prompted me to come into the living room in the middle of the night and to tell the dream to my mother, who was awake and as I recall in my mind’s eye, sitting at some table in the living room working on something.
I don’t recall her response per se, but that I told a personal nightmare to my mother, says a lot. I remember I was so frightened I wanted every light on and could not immediately go back to bed.
I also can recall my earliest nightmare, which was probably around six years old. I have recalled on occasion over the years, though the plot isn’t easy to describe. I remember it involved George Washington and the school cafeteria and I was very frightened in the dream. The content was undoubtedly indirectly prompted by something I was learning in school about George Washington. In the dream, I would say he was like a vampire or something and hooked up to wires of some sort…that too, must have stemmed from images on TV.
Just to clarify, I see no meaning in that six-year-old-dream, only a remembrance that things frightened me, as do all of us, and these things come out in our dreams. As for the dream in 1981, I don’t think that had any particular meaning – possibly a warning of sorts but there is no way to substantiate that – but it definitely revealed to me as time went on and I thought of the dream how deeply I was impacted by my father’s death and how some of my dreams took on various nightmarish death imagery. I have only shared this dream with a small number of trusted friends due to the content, and I can remember the scene, atmosphere and plot in my mind almost as if dreamed last night…
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Over the years, I have also had repeated dreams of sorts – those with basically the same plot but different details.
Examples of these might be showing up to a college class for the final and realizing I forgot to attend class all semester! This funny and probably common theme was recurrent in younger years. Along those lines, I used to also dream I showed up for high school or college band practice or performance and realized that I had forgot to attend those practices, too!
I’m smiling at this part…I’ve had dreams where I’m with the UD bandfront under the stadium – we are about to march out and I’ve simply shown up and am trying to learn some routine. Really. Quickly. Ha ha. Ditto for dreams involving Bandfront Alumni days (something I’ve never done), and dreams about being on my high school practice field trying to quickly figure out (or fake!) what I was supposed to do.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve dreamed those repeated themes of classes, band, and otherwise being unprepared.
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When I was in college, a repeated dream I would have was walking around the campus with my father, trying to point out buildings, explain my life to him and otherwise converse. I remember for a long time after my father died it was hard for me to picture his face or think of how his voice sounded, and the dreams at this time as I recall seemed to be more of faceless, silent impressions of walking around with him on campus. It was just me, talking.
Of course, there were repeated dreams I had about my father’s death which I would dream both often and then from time to time – actually the same dream, different details but same words I spoke – until I had this dream for the umpteenth time in 2018 and for the first time ever in that familiar dream plot, I spoke different words to him.
And, I honestly do not recall ever having this dream again since then. These dreams deserve a separate writing possibly at some point. Actually, I think I did write about it once, here. You Came to Me was the piece.
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Like most of us, there are a number of other repeated dream themes I have had (I’ve never had a repeated identical dream) along the lines of actually common (but bizarre) things. Like the being naked in a public place dream…those kinds of dreams involving either interpretation of embarrassment and shame or desire to be transparent and known, ha ha.
Oh, speaking of that dream theme, I’ve dreamed a number of times I’m suddenly giving birth in a public place or that I am older and somehow didn’t know I was pregnant, and I am somewhere and give birth, gleefully feeling successful in delivering my own baby! Ha.
Now, this may actually have some spiritual meaning, but I do not know…
I should probably quit while I’m ahead here – ha – but of course I won’t…because I cannot assume that I am in fact, ahead! Some readers may have already put me into the crazy category.
Oh well!
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So I’ll give a couple of other similar weird, repeated dream scenarios I have had over the years involving unidentifiable but seemingly specific places. In one dream, I am in someone’s home painting a mural – they are in some other state and have let me stay in their home while working – it is a family and they come and go while I am there working for days and sleeping and showering. I have never had this literal experience. The strange thing about the dream is my impression upon waking is that I was there again…the impression that this dream place was a specific place that existed in my dreams – in structure, decor, unnamed family members etc.
Just interesting to me…and along those lines, another dream of being in some place that is specifically the same (but made-up-in-the-dream-same-place) that upon waking I have the impression that in my dreams, I was there again.
Oh…oh…two more now come to mind!
The repeated dream of being in a house or building and opening new doors and finding an endless maze-like series of rooms and underground tunnels. I believe this is a common dream theme, too, and I think in dreams the accompanying feelings and thoughts are part of the scenario. In my dreams along these lines there is sometimes imagery from the UD dorms near Main Street…they were interconnected with a long series of basements and rooms with doors. I do recall during that time exploring one night and finding that among the lounges with kitchenettes to cook and bake – and quiet study rooms – there was at least one room with a piano in it.
I can remember my joy the first time I discovered that room and that I could close the door and play alone in the basement of that dorm, it felt like a secret place because I never noticed anyone else wanting to go there.
As for the other imagery of endless rooms this dream has often been set in my Aunt Mabel’s city rooming house that was in Frederick, Maryland. There was a huge staircase going to the 2nd floor of her very old home and this was where the “roomers” boarded and I was admonished not to go up there. I recall a couple times being up there with my mother or aunt for some reason to use the bathroom perhaps and being fascinated. So yes, I’ve often dreamed of going upstairs in Aunt Mabel’s house and opening door after door after door and finding an endless maze of other bedrooms and bathrooms.
This dream theme has undoubtedly been born from other feelings and expressions drawn from the experience of having a new home. That feeling one has when they first enter a home they want to rent or buy and begin to explore the rooms…
Oh..oh…and then…the flying dreams! Those are actually amazing.
Have you ever dreamed you were flying? Another recurrent dream I used to have was being in the balcony of the Methodist Church I attended as a child – I dreamed this often during college and later. I would flap my arms until I had the actual sensation in my dreams of “aeronautic lift” and I would take off…gliding (flying, as though almost swimming through the air) from what seemed like perches on windows or other places high up, soaring overtop the pews below and close to the ceiling. These dreams were occasional, and liberating.
Liberating, in contrast to dreams of flying that were set in my childhood neighborhood, where I am running from some person(s) or danger through the fields near the woods in that neighborhood or through the woods themselves and when I feel I’m about to be overtaken by this thing or person I flap my arms like a bird and find myself easily soaring overhead – gracefully and effortlessly flying.
The interesting thing about these dreams is the mind’s creation and seemingly very real sensation of aerial perspective. It makes me wonder how my mind creates this unreal, non-literal experience so well. Perhaps it is formed from TV footage/movies seen during my lifetime, I do not know!
I have a cousin who has had this experience, too, of flying in her dreams. We have exchanged and described dreams at times and she and I seem to understand what this is like.
I sometimes wonder if creative or spiritual dream abilities tend to run in families like other natural traits. My Aunt Doris, my father’s sister, had some amazing dreams (in spiritual content and symbol) she shared with me a couple of times when I would visit her during her later years in the care facility.
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Well, I’m leading up to my dream that is related to this piece’s title, I really am! I didn’t expect I would have so much to write (that I would actually write) or that I would put this somewhat risky stuff out there!
I’m willing to take that risk, because I am enjoying this piece and have been reflecting today on that dream I had around 2003 or 2004 about a Pear Tree.
Actually, I began to draft a piece called Wild Dreams over the weekend after I had a somewhat unusual and a bit comedic dream plot and dream imagery Friday night – I never fully finished it but probably will at some point – and want to keep it separate from this piece rather than mix the serious with the comedic.
I’ve been known to do that before in my writings and retrospectively reading, I may get around to better editing of those at some point.
So without further ado I will write out what I recall of the dream and include a simple drawing I did of the dream a few years afterward. Around that time I had abandoned physical journal writing with my increasing computer usage but decided that as an artist and a dreamer I should start an image journal of occasional things of personal significance and dreams.
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My Pear Tree Dream
The dream is set in the backyard of my childhood home. Specifically, in the backyard and I am standing somewhere in the middle, looking to the right and to a small hill that ran along the back of the property.
There is a large tree and from a distance I notice the tree is full of huge, plentifully hanging pears.
It is unusual because the pears are the size of footballs.
My feeling in the dream is one of excitement, and then desire.
During those years and especially prior, I loved to make jam. I remember discovering wild blackberries along a road for the first time and my young family picking them for hours. Big, lush berries (though thorns, too) free for the taking.
In the dream of this pear tree, I had an initial thought and inclination, though I am not a huge fan of pears and have never made pear jam.
My inclination felt like, “Wow…look at all that huge fruit and I have found a discovered it and I must go and pick it.”
At this point in the dream I remember those thoughts. That I needed to go to the tree and pick these enormous pears. But at this point in the dream as I walked toward the hill, the tree began to shake (quiver, sort of) on its own. And as it shook, the pears were falling off on their own.
In the dream, I then thought, “I need to go and gather them up!” and as I approached the tree, I then found that all the pears were already put into a basket that was sitting in the grass underneath the tree…
And that is what I recall of the dream, other than upon waking having a number of thoughts, feeling compelled to review it in my mind and having a sense that this was some type of symbolic spiritual dream (as in contrast to a run-of-the-mill natural and meaningless dream) and ponder its meaning.
I told the dream to a few people around that time. And I remember there was a general sense of encouragement from the dream.
It seemed to be hopeful that I would reap huge fruit and that it would be supernatural in some sense, and almost effortless other than the implied picking up the basket with the shaken-down-and-gathered-up-fruit – the obvious sense that God was doing this thing in my life.
There is a biblical text that says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” – Proverbs 13:12
Whatever that dream meant or means in any ongoing way, in the natural sense that dream came during a time of immense personal struggle, fear and uncertainty. Beginning during the summer of 2003 my first husband and I were separated for four months. We came back together and attempted to work even more on things, sold a home and bought another home in 2004 with what seemed like possibly a new start, but by December of 2005, we were officially divorced. Because of our previous separation, the legal process begun in October of that year was swift, quick, mostly mutual, and somewhat easy (in stark contrast to my 2nd recent divorce) but nevertheless after twenty years and two children together, a significant life devastation for both of us in differing ways, and for our children, in other ways.
Then followed a seven year gap of my singleness, trying to rebuild my life, grow my business even more, and care for my sons. That life chapter ended with a second marriage and unexpected, unplanned and unforseen agreement to relocate my life and my business to Alabama.
That marriage of nearly eight years also ended in divorce in 2019. And with the accompanying deep – nearly personally devastating impact – of all the changes in the lives of my sons and in my business, that these years held, and then, relocating back north.
Once again, I am fearful, and now plumb exhausted on many levels (I know…I should use a different metaphor than the plum fruit homonym but who ever heard of being pear exhausted?!) and am trying to rebuild every part of my life. And in a way where I do not forego reaping all the labors of my heart and hands over these years…
Obviously it leaves me wondering along the lines of How long Oh Lord?
and Is the best and hugest fruit lost?
and Is it too late?
Is it too late for me to harvest spiritually and otherwise in this season of my life?
The obvious answer is a resounding no…it is never too late.
While it is true that many things in life become much harder over time, it is equally true that God’s message to us is that it is never too late. Oh the biblical references on that one…from Sarah and Abraham to the Parable of the Wedding Banquet and the Workers in the Vineyard, for starters…
And then there are the layers now added into my current situation (and thinking about that dream) where now I am literally in a place of physically growing fruits, fruit trees and vegetables – something that always held my interest but has evolved over these recent years to what I believe, is God bringing me to this place. Both spiritually and literally, for many reasons.
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I did for the first time ever look online for common spiritual meanings of the pear tree or dreaming of a pear tree out of curiosity. Of course, if we think the Bible is hard to interpret and there are a numerous speculations in some of that, it is the same with these online sources. I read some and think, and who wrote this???! Like cheap and superstitious other things, some of this is in the same category.
Yet, it is the season of Advent and I think of the Christmas song which involves a Pear Tree.
So I searched that, too.
The interpretation I most surely overlooked almost twenty years ago is the most basic spiritual understanding of spiritual fruits, and of trees standing through hardships, and hardships producing larger spiritual fruits. I would speculate, though I’m not certain, whether a fruit tree that has endured drought or stunted seasons or other injuries actually produces better or bigger fruit. I don’t know, and I should look that up, too. (Another time!)
Often tree and plant growths take place first underground, and that I do know.
I think many things in our life and especially our dreams of all sorts often beg questions and interpretations that don’t firmly come…maybe sometimes the interpretation is not singular, but extremely complex and multi-faceted.
Sometimes it is good to have a healthy respect for the mysteries in life and in our faith.
The ability to say, I don’t know…and I don’t understand.
I think this is a good stopping place and I will simply put below a few findings online relating to Pear Trees that seem to make sense and have balance, if one is to believe there is a logical, rational and spiritual method of any sort in interpreting one’s own dreams…
Interesting responses on Google from search terms meaning of pears in dreams:
https://www.dreamglossary.com/p/pear/
Interesting responses on Google from search terms meaning of pears as symbol:
“In many cultures spanning thousands of years, we can find references to the fruit of the Pear tree as a symbol of divine sustenance, abundance and longevity. The shape of the pear has represented the female form in the art world for centuries, creating a strong symbol of fruitfulness and femininity.” (Source)
Number one Google response to search terms partridge in pear tree meaning:
“The partridge in a pear tree is symbolic of Christ upon the Cross. In the song, He is symbolically presented as a mother partridge because she would feign injury to decoy a predator away from her nest. She was even willing to die for them. The tree is the symbol of redemption.” (Source)
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