Do you remember what you dreamt last night?

Probably not. Experts say we forget 96 to 99% of our dreams.
Oh, it’s not because we didn’t have them, sleep doctors say we all dream, but we simply forget them. They say our dreams slip away in the time gap between our R-E-M sleep and our awakening. The longer the gap, the more likely we are to forget.
So if we want to remember our dreams we need to awaken in the middle of them, which means being startled out of our sleep. They do this at sleep centers when monitors show a person is at the height of R-E-M sleep.

This means we can’t help but wonder just how disjointed dear old St. Joseph’s sleep patterns must have been. For this Sunday’s Gospel tells of no less than three divine interruptions (out of a New Testament record four) in which Papa Joe gets stirred up to do something rather dramatic. And unlike you and me, Joseph doesn’t seem to forget his dreams.

Maybe it’s all in the name. After all, Joseph’s Old Testament namesake was famous for his dreams too, granted his was on the interpretative side and, of course, he got a funky Technicolor coat (and a Broadway play) out of the deal. But at the heart of both of their stories is a desire to take dreams seriously – to recognize and understand the Word of the Lord as it had come to them – and to single-mindedly pursue it.

Let’s face it God gives you and me dreams too.

Sometimes they’re just as dramatic. Like St. Joseph, they can inspire us to pull up roots and move to strange cities. They can stir us to leave old careers and start new ones. They can rouse us to abandon relationships and begin others. And sometimes our dreams are even more dramatic. What would it be like to see illiteracy in our poor neighborhoods eliminated, or to see homelessness in our community cured? Or what would it be like to see medical care for every sick child in Haiti?

And our biggest challenge, unlike the other Josephs, is remembering our dreams.

We receive a Word from the Lord, recognize its authenticity then the weeds grow up all around us. Other responsibilities creep in. We become distracted. We lose focus. Maybe we begin to doubt the authenticity of our dreams in the first place, or we simply choose not to be startled out of our R-E-M, and decide to snooze right through it all instead.

In parallel with the pulse taking, goal setting and reality checks that typically punctuate the end of the year, perhaps you and I should take a moment to reconsider our dreams as well.

For God gives you and me dreams too.

What is it?
Where is it?
What can be done with it in 2010?


Reading:
The Great Divorce - Clive Staples Lewis
Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street - A Moral Compass for the New Economy – Jim Wallis
So Young, Brave and Handsome - Leif Enger