The other night I taught a class to the new students in our formation program for Spiritual Directors. One of the topics I covered was what to say to a spiritual director as they are all required to have direction. I suggested that keeping a journal was helpful and talked about a special place at the back for dreams. I even told them how I am keeping a journal with four parts: daily prayer journal; review of the month; favorite quotations; and creative projects and dreamwork. I seldom remember a dream but this morning woke up with a vivid one. I was back at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles where I was a boarder in high school; I seemed to be in uniform but others were in habits and I also seemed to be in charge. I had a room to my own nearer to the study hall and the others were in a dorm farther away from my corridor. To have a room of my own made me feel good. I could see the desks in the study hall and knew that I was to give some talks on Scripture and was not prepared. There was a bit more to the dream that seemed symbolic but I woke up mostly feeling that I need to go back to reading Scripture every day.
Yesterday I was again reading The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault. Part 3 has five Christian Wisdom Practices: Centering Prayer Meditation; Lectio Divina; Chanting and Psalmody; Welcoming; and Eucharist. I stopped after reading the section on Lectio Divina and maybe that was a call to me that came in the dream. Being in St. Charles where I went to school could be explained by the fact that one of my community left early this morning for a meeting there and I wrote notes to go with her just before going to bed. The truth is that I think there was a lesson for me in that dream. I have told others that it is good to spend at least ten or fifteen minutes reading the Bible every day and some time ago I stopped doing this. I think we need to feed our souls with God's word and will start again to read Scripture daily, not just the day's liturgical readings, but go through a book or a letter. One of ours who loved Scripture told me that I should spend time reading from the Old Testament and from the New every day! Maybe the dream will get me doing this!
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