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Dear Dreamers – There’s a particular shrub whose blossoms scented the air of earliest summer when as a child, I would immerse myself, bodymindandsoul into the hours-long enthrallment of reading. The reading tree, I call that shrub now when I smell it. While I try to live a reasonably responsible adult life, I admit I have arranged much of it to accommodate great books. As a bookworm kid, bookseller, English teacher, read-aloud mom, craver of poetry, lifelong learner, and fiction fiend, I’ve managed to wrangle a lot of book time. Especially I love those astonishing stories that when you read them, “they read you.”  (My brother said something like that recently, and I've been thinking about those titles. Find my short list below.) What about you? What are those books that hold the mirror up to us so that we see the gorgeous, appalling, astonishing confabulation of who we really are? Those books that speak to us personally, turning into ourselves, shocking us into awareness, and helping us reach for something we didn’t know we held? And because the unconscious appropriates anything useful to its purposes, you might also find characters, settings, and objects from those special books showing up in a dream. What part of you are these images inviting you to behold with a new perspective? Really! Let’s hear it! Send to laura@firebynight.net. Here’s one of my dream-images-from-a-book, and I’m giving you this one not because it’s the wisest thing to do, or exciting or beautiful, but because it’s so grim and hard to take. That’s what we do as dreamworkers: remembering that dreams are brutally honest and that they offer tough love, we allow them to work for our own good. It's not a pleasant experience, but it's rich and challenging, exactly what our soul craves. The dream: Horcrux I’m in a Hogwarts-like setting, and I find a horcrux in the form of a silver charm. I am astonished…thrilled…and I want to keep it to use for my own well-intentioned magic. In the dream, I can’t recall exactly what a horcrux is, but I know it’s serious magic and it is amazing to find one. My friends (the Harry Potter crowd) are horrified and tell me to hide it and run away.  I think a horcrux exisits only in the Harry Potter world, and as many of you know, it is NOT the sort of thing you want to find, much less keep around. There’s no way to “use” it, however well-intentioned you may be. (In fact, those good intentions are pretty suspect.) A horcrux is a terrible, terrible spell. It looks like an ordinary object or animal, but embedded in it is the split-off fragment of the soul of the diabolical Voldemort. He – or any evil wizard - chooses to undertake this appalling act of self-destruction in order to ensure their immortality: the piece of soul in the horcrux will never die. It’s a way of keeping part of the wizard and their intentions alive, even if the wizard’s body dies. In the dream, my clear-headed friends prevail upon me to abandon the horcrux, so crisis is avoided for now. But. The horcrux is a volatile energy. I have layers and layers of deep stuff to work through here. Initial insights: Maybe a horcrux, in the inner world, is anything for which I rip out chunks of my soul and ruin my wholeness not out of love but out of fear… or the need to control…or the desire for self-preservation (even if the self I preserve is so diminished as to be dangerous). I don’t have to identify as Voldemort to create a horcrux. I just have to look at my ordinary life: what possesses me like that? How am I fragmenting myself just now but don’t realize it? And in the bigger picture - how am I part of a carefully wrought system that values desperate acts of self-preservation over vulnerability to Life itself? And – because actually in the books, the Potter gang does destroy horcruxes - what is the awe-ful magic that can break the spell? Beautiful, innocent things can carry these fragmented souls, and the real tragedy is that I don’t have to intend something “bad” in order to toxify myself or what I love, whether the beloved is in the personal realm, the cultural world, or the archetypal depths. Believe me, the dream journal is filling up on this one, and the dream “art” is yielding images that are clearly more exploratory than beautiful. Mostly, I’ve been talking with my inner “evil wizard” whom I recognize as the bitter, wounded side of a familiar animus energy. When “he” needs attention, he makes trouble in the inner world. So my work is to listen, hear what’s bothering him, and help him name what he really wants to be doing with his alchemical powers. Then, if it feels right to integrate his intentions, I can begin to do so. It takes a strong ego to work with this animus. Just as the fragrance of the Reading Tree recalls the thin space between life and fiction, so do the rituals that mark my interactions with this energy. He is important, but he is not the boss. If the work is good, who knows what might transpire or transform in the service of healing and wholeness? This summer, take a whiff of that Reading Tree, do your read your novels, do shadow work. In the Harry Potter stories, the good guys eventually win, though at great peril and with personal sacrifice. I think that’s pretty much the big story in every book on my shelf of favorites. Those books read me loud and clear, and help me keep lurching towards towards grace.  The Short List as it Occurs to Me Just Now, In No Particular Order, Fiction Only: The Plover – Bryan Doyle (and anything else he wrote) Nothing to See Here – Kevin Wilson Gilead, Home, and Lila – Marilynne Robinson (3 books) The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse – Louise Erdrich The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife - (2 titles) Phillip Pullman The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee The Tempest – William Shakespeare Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner House of Spirits – Isabel Allende To the Bright Edge of the World – Eowyn Ivey (I do love an epistolary novel) Send me your titles! I'd love to explore them. Laura@firebynight.net. Thank you and deep dreams, all. Laura Photo Credits:
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Spring... a walk in the park...birds warbling...dazzling sun on the lake... a delightful toddler with his grandpa… joggers and amblers...a cool breeze...delirious green undergrowth filling the woods...a million wildflowers. Here on the levee, we're all strangers but we're so glad to be in this world that we're babbling in postCovid wordbursts – “I saw a huge woodpecker! “That poplar is magnificent!” "Is that a heron?" “Can you believe all this larkspur?” "Such cute turtles!" And then: “WHAT is THAT?” Up from the mud, grim and ugly and hulking, lodged on a submerged limb, is a snapping turtle. Oblivious to the thrilled, horrified onlookers, this prehistoric monster sits like a hunk of rock, unmoving, unblinking, unbothered even by the weeds on its bulging head.  Who invited this thing to Spring? IN one of the dream groups lately we were talking about resurrection, and how we experience it. People had a lot to say about the wildflowers and the reviving effects of spring on our Covid-entombed spirits. It seemed relevant to bring up the other side of all the loveliness. What came to mind was the weirdly abrupt ending of the oldest version of the oldest gospel. Mark describes the scene at the empty tomb: a man in white tells the women Jesus is risen and gone and they'll meet up with him soon. Their response? They “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” And... that's the end. Somewhere in this experience of amazement, of radiance and joy and life restored lurks story about terror. A few years ago I had this dream: A huge snapping turtle, older than the lake, old as myth, heaves up on the bank. Her shell cracks open like an armored door, and a cold, wet, weeping woman emerges, with weeds and twigs in her long stringy hair. She’s completely undone: she sobs as though she holds a lake of tears. That dream was the beginning of deep, terrible, necessary healing. Sorry if this is a downer but I’m telling you the dream-honest truth about spring: buds open, eggs open, wombs open, tombs open, and emerging into Life can feel like the hardest, scariest, ugliest thing you'll ever do.  Practice: Envision hold a difficult dream image in your open hand or open heart. It won’t hurt you: just behold it and feel its energy. Then put it down. For several days, return to the image and do the same thing, until you feel a shift. You probably won't feel happinessor relief. You may feel something more complex and subtle, like compassion, forgiveness, or the kind of joy that comes with tears.  EVENTS
Nashville Jung Circle, Jung's Red Book with Adele Tyler on Sunday April 25 at 2:30 on Zoom: go to www.nashvillejungcircle.org to sign up. The Jung Platform – Here comes another free series! "Call and Purpose" May 19-22. I’ll see you there: sign up at www.jungplatform.com. Haden Summer Dream Conference- It' s the Biggie! Keynote speakers include Mirabai Starr and Brian McLaren. Loads of workshops*, plus music, yoga, and artmaking. And a dream group every day. May 30-June 4. Learn more and register at www.hadeninstitute.com *I’m leading the "Dream Story Telling" workshop Coming this Summer through Zoom: Two New Dream Opportunities at Fire by Night! Metaphor, Myth, Meaning and Miracle - a 4-week "summer camp" about the Jungian perspective on dreaming and dreamwork. This is a great way to learn what you wish we had time to talk about in dream groups! It's a good prep for group and personal dreamwork this fall. (Includes lots of dreamwork practices, but it’s not a dream group). Choose evening or daytime sessions. Signups coming soon. More at http://www.firebynight.net/one-and-one-mentoring-623304.html and The Oneira Book Club begins in July with The Wisdom of Your Dreams by Jeremy Taylor. Juicy discussion, a little teaching, some storytelling, always dreamwork. Oooo fun! More at http://www.firebynight.net/one-and-one-mentoring-623304.html I love Lent. Note: nobody ever tried to make me give up chocolate. Rather, Lent always appealed to the adventurer in me: it’s less about self-denial and more about making room, saying yes, putting on the hiking boots for a serious stretch of soul journey in the company of the Christ. In the Christian tradition, we see the Christ mystery (which could maybe be called “How it is when the Divine Is Embodied and Gets Loose in the World”) in the story and person of Jesus. But this soul-stretching time of deep journeying is part of every wisdom tradition, and I hope that as you read this, you’ll be able to sense how this story translates into your language.  Once I had a journey dream: I am one of a small group hiking with a guide, a rough, wise woman who loves wild places and knows the way. We trek up to a high alpine meadow on a ridge, a zillion miles from anywhere. We set up tents. As dusk settles, we light the fire. The wind picks up. Night falls. The stars shine with unbelievable brilliance. The air becomes chillier, then cold. Sparks fly from our campfire, and as the wind grows wilder, the fire flares out then settles into glowing embers. The night goes on and on, and we are so cold – but instead of huddling in our tents, we stretch out in our sleeping bags in the stiff grass, facing each other across the dying coals. The guide starts laughing in a warm, delighted way: she knows how alive we feel, and how utterly right and good it is to be together in this wild freezing darkness. The night, the wind, the companionship – all of it is exhilarating and quiet too, as we feel ourselves full of the Presence that fills this wilderness. I wake up thinking – this is how I want to live. That dream is my image for how it feels to be in Lent. Certainly, in the dream we are without a number of things that would be nice to have (such as chocolate, not to mention heat and light) but maybe if we had those things, we wouldn’t experience that wild, living presence in the sky and grass and wind, and that sense of being so well companioned on the trail.  The setting is so much of the dream. When I look at the setting in any dream, I’m looking at an address, or the part of me the dream addresses. I can ask who am I when I am here? So when I think of that dream, I say, “Here I am in my inner wilderness, walking with Wisdom and my inner pilgrim band, and this place is full of forces: darkness and starlight, fire and ash, and the wild holy wind of the Spirit that is knowable, tangible, invisible, true, and I'm breathing it, it's part of my body. When I am here, I am receptive. I am not stuck inside my own perceptions. In waking life, I couldn’t actually live on that ridge. There is raw danger up there, and I could die of overexposure. But as a spirit person, I know that without this place, and the awake-in-the-night awe of it in the company of these people, I’m not fully alive. I just hope that when I get home, I can stammer out what happened, and why I want others to come with me next time. As a person who chooses to live inside a very capacious version of the Christian story, I think of Lent as a six week trek with Jesus. His life journey is an individuation journey, as Jung would call it. So my participation in Lent is participation with that life of the Divine Human, from calling to response to death to resurrection. Lent is a ritual of companioned individuation. Where our feet take us during Lent, awake and in dreams, will show us where we stand on things, how we choose to move through time, who travels with us, what our perspective is in relation to others. Maybe we see our habitual assumptions and skewed values. Maybe we are challenged to shift positions, share a new view, or travel a road less taken. Count on it, an intentional Lenten journey will take you someplace new. If you choose to journey with your dreams this Lent, they will put you into the territory of what Jung calls the Self, which is what others might call the Divine Within, the Imago Dei, the Soul, true self, or Essence. Every spiritual tradition has a name for this vital transpersonal Aliveness that draws us further into the mystery, reveals the wisdom that companions us, and shows us how to thrive. If this appeals to you, consider joining me and a small group of others for a 6-week Lenten dream group (details below). We will frame our dreamwork with six place-centric passages in the Jesus journey as narrated in the Gospels. Even if you don’t recall a dream, you can dream into the gospel story. And if you bring your dream to the group, we will enter your journey with you. Deep Dreams and Traveling Mercies, Laura  Hafiz, the 14th century Sufi mystic offers a lovely invitation to the journey: The place where you are right now God circled on a map for you. Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move Against the earth and sky, The Beloved has bowed there -- Our Beloved has bowed there knowing You were coming. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NOW at FIRE BY NIGHT - TWO NEW OFFERINGS... SOON! Lenten Dream Groups starting Feb. 15 and 18 Dreamwork is soulwork. And the Jungian perspective on dreams is deeply aligned with the essence of Christian spirituality. Church folks, this is a good place to start with dreamwork. And for those of you who like Jesus just fine, but church makes you restless – or maybe you just don’t do church at all anymore – you will feel at home here. Because this has nothing to do with church, and everything to do with experiencing the Christ within together with companions on the way. In a Lenten Dream Group, you’ll explore your dreams within the framework of six passages about Jesus’ life journey as seen in the Gospels. In each session, we’ll talk a little about the Jesus journey, then explore two dreams each meeting. In between you’ll receive short readings and dreamwork practice suggestions. This group includes six weekly meetings plus a final celebration our dreams will help us plan. Limit 5 dreamers per group. Cost $150. Monday Nights, beginning Feb. 15 6-7:30 Central Thursday Mornings, beginning Feb. 9:30-11 Central Email me soon to insure your place - these start soon, and places are limited! laura@firebynight.net. For a description of dream groups, visit http://www.firebynight.net/dream-groups.html AND THIS!  DreamStoryTelling Workshop Saturday Feb. 20 Your dreams are soul stories that challenge and enlighten you - and sometimes you want to share them! But how do you tell a dream so that its mystery & meaning come across to people who aren’t steeped in dreamwork? Here you’ll learn to craft a powerful dream into a tellable tale. This simple storytelling process will give you insight into your dream and help you articulate its magic. Before the workshop, choose a dream that has stayed with you awhile. Write it in first person, present tense, double spaced. You’ll also need a stack of paper and a box of crayons or colored pencils. Saturday Feb. 20, 9-12 Central time, 10-1 Eastern. Cost: $25 (Venmo: @FirebyNight. Zelle: 615-594-5930 Paypal: Fire by Night Dreamwork) To register, email me at laura@firebynight.net. Deadline for registration is Friday Feb. 19. Looking forward to seeing you there!  I wanted the T shirt that said, “A Story is the shortest distance between two people” but they were out of my color at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough TN. Instead, I have a lovely blue one that reads “Stories are our native language.” Which is just as true, and completes the thought: “Stories are how we relate to each other. Tell a story and expect to connect.” Right now, if you’ve got a story that connects people, that gives us alI a wider, more generous, more lifegiving perspective, please get out there and tell it.  Here’s one of mine: a story that involves a dream which explains why I keep showing up in your inbox. This dream came nearly two decades ago, a few years after I’d finished my dreamwork training. While most of my time was spent in the delight and disorder of raising young children, I tended my dreams, ran a dream group and – in every minute I could wrangle – devoured all the Jungian dream books I could get my hands on. It was a formidable intellectual diet. In the dream, I’m walking down a sandy road in a pine forest when I come to a little cottage. Inside, it’s dim. At the stove, I see a man with his back toward me, whom I recognize as a professor, a former colleague. He’s older now, with disheveled hair and a rumpled flannel shirt. As I come closer I see he’s boiling turnips in a big black pot. I look up to remark about the turnips, and then I see – he is blind. He knows I’ve realized this, and explains, simply and almost cheerfully, “I was given blindness so I could see past my books.” I woke up flooded with that deep shock of an Aha – knowing I’ve received a direct hit from the unconscious. Grateful, yet staggered by the impact.  This dream spoke exactly to my situation: I’d been living too much in the intellectual realm. The dream shows me both the consequences (blindness) and offered another perspective through the image of the professor, who in waking life had left academia to become a priest. The whole cabin is a crucible dedicated to psychospiritual alchemical transformation. Contents of my unconscious – the turnips – have been dug up. They’re now being cooked so that they can be shared and eaten – integrated, in Jungian language. Dream wisdom showed me the limits of unbalanced learning about dreams. Study was blinding me to the living, transformative relationship with the dreams, with others, and ultimately with the Dreamgiver. As I worked with the image of the blind wise man/alchemist/cook, I began to embody and teach dreams more. It seemed right to grow the work into Fire by Night, so here I am, in your inbox, your Zoom screen, your telephone; your classroom and your small group, your retreat; your school, your church, your circle. These days, as the tough roots from unconscious push their way up - in your life and in the life of the collective - I want to offer you a place to cook your turnips. Bring those raw gritty weird-looking beautiful nightmarish "emergences" and let’s make them edible, with heat and water and time, with a grain of salt and lots of butter. Those dreams are soul roots that can make us wise. And when share them, we grow strong together.  Please join me at the table, where we can tell each other, in our native language of story, in awe and laughter and terror and always with hope, the divine human story, dream by dream.  Lenten Dream Circles: Hearing deep truth is an excellent Lenten discipline, and nothing tells the truth like a dream. There’s still time to join a Lenten Dream Circle. Plan it for your group or join one now: we begin the week of Ash Wednesday. Contact me for details and scheduling; laura@firebynight.net. Individual Sessions: Bring your dreams for deep listening. Come for a session or a season to catch the accents of your personal dream language, and hear a wider meaning. These Days whatever you have to say, leave the roots on, let them dangle and the dirt just to make clear where they come from -Charles Olson ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nashville Jung Circle January 24 2:30-4:30 “2020 as an Alchemical Year ”presented by Dr. Karen Harper, LCSW February 28, 2:30-4:30 “Soul Collage” led LeAnne Nesbitt Join us on Zoom. Learn more at www.nashvillejungcircle.com. Or contact me and I'll forward the link: laura@firebynight.net Starts today! The Jung Platform is offering a free Summit on Dreams from Jan 14-17th. There will be sessions with 12 world class experts on dreams from different traditions: Jungian, Native American, Tibetan and Shamanic. You can enroll for free here: https://jungplatform.com/summit/dreams-and-your-personal-journey  A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor was sitting in her front yard when a streak blazed past her. She had the wits – and even the camera - to see that it was a bobcat. It turned, looked at her, and dashed away. BOBCAT! Here on my street!  While this alarmed some neighbors, my sons and I were thrilled. Days and nights of Bobcat Watch commenced. Binoculars by the window. Stealthy exploration of the thicket by the creek. Forensic dissection of dog poop, hopeful it might be bobcat sign. I forbade setting out a chunk of ham but it’s possible Peter did it anyway. William, invoking the predatory grace of the harmonic minor scale, improvised a sensuous Bobcat Luring Tune and played it by the open window at dusk. No luck. Others have seen the bobcat again, but we, alas, still quest for clues. Sometimes dreamwork feels like Bobcat Watch. We glimpse a dream, we write a few words, catching the dream just as my neighbor caught a fleeting photo of the big cat. Hunched over our notebooks, we associate, amplify, and sketch our dreams, looking for explanations and meaning. We long for something we can’t imagine to appear. But remember, dear Dreamer: dreams are just the signs. Dreams are the damp pawprint on your driveway, the bedded spot in your tall grass, the scat in the garden, the tuft of hair snagged in your rosebush. They all attest to the Wild Presence, here, every night, just outside your door. Remembering this can rearrange a person. At first we thought the bobcat lived in our neighborhood. Soon the bobcat re-ordered our whole sense and scope of the place and of each other: we now realize that we live in the domain of the bobcat. We keep eyes open for the thrill of the hidden streak, the slightest movement. We compare notes with neighbors we didn’t know til now. We watch out for each others’ pets, and invite each we other to sit – distanced and masked - around the firepit on a Friday night. We’re not exactly scared, but awed and wary as we tend the Wild Presence who has let us know we are living in its territory. So sometimes when you’re doing your dreamwork, and you feel a shiver, a prickle, an inkling, straighten up. Turn around slowly. And breathless, you may find yourself eye to eye with the great cat, the living source you hoped to glimpse, which has all along been following your trail...gazing, golden and glorious, at you. Yes, it can rip you open. Or you can open yourself up to the transformative powers of the DreamGiver - who watches from the shadows of that fire circle, in this neighborhood where the evangelical right-wingers and the yellow-dog democrats and the gay couple and the single mothers and the Obamacare-dependent cancer survivors and the songwriters who sing in their driveway on Friday nights and the economically crashing self-employed and very very shy and the exhausted homeschooling parents somehow keep the peace and grow more human by honoring the Wild, here on our uncommon ground in Bobcat territory. Wild, wise, live-encounter dreams to you, Laura 
 Something new: Digging Deep with a Dreamwork Retreat for your Small Group Curious about group dreamwork? You can book a one-time dream circle for your small group or circle of trust. You’ll learn the basics of group dreamwork, practice three ways of exploring your own dreams, and reach into your creative depths for some embodied dream-tending that helps you carry your dream’s wisdom into waking life.
Groups: All groups are set for now: if you’d like to be on the waiting list to join in January, please email me at laura@firebynight.net.
Photo of bobcat at night courtesy of D.C. Cat Count Dear Dreamers – It’s Emergency Preparedness Month, something that weirdly appeals to me. Maybe it comes from raising a pack of Boy Scouts. Or from the prudent thrill of filling so many plastic tubs with supplies before the inevitable disaster of Y2K. Or the charm of the tiny, detailed survival kits my boys used to pack into Altoid boxes. Given the vividness and nightmarish quality of many Covid dreams, it occurs to me that we may need to check our Dream Emergency Kits.  This month I want to remind you of the Swiss Army Knife of dreamwork, the one tool you absolutely must have to engage with your dreams and to follow through on their purpose. Often you will need this when things feel troubling or nightmarish in the dream. But know this: when you feel an emergency in a dream, it comes in the service of emergence.* The tool goes beyond “Mitigation Strategy” and into the realm of “Divine Compassionate Healing Miracle for Yourself and for the Ages.” Here’s your tool: it is the phrase I am that too. Yes, you probably already have it in your pocket. Yes, this is shadow work. I just want to remind you how necessary it is, and offer a blade by blade review of how to use “I am that too” when you wake from a dream, particularly one that disturbs you.
 I am offering this tool now because we are in a state of multiple emergencies, including the Covid crisis, wildfires and hurricanes, political turbulence, coming to terms with systemic racism, violence at peaceful protests, economic instability, and the general upheaval of life as we thought we knew it. To many of us, it feels like a time of emergency. It can also be a time of emergence. Of new capacities in ourselves…of space for the Other…and of the wild surge of knowing that way way down in the psyche, in the imagination of God – there is a kind of unifying force field which holds us all. Carl Jung talked about the necessity of doing this kind of soulstretching , claiming that the fate of humankind depended on every one of us doing our inner work. Shadow work is hard, it’s never finished, and it often feels nearly impossible. I’m still pretty bad at it. But dreams help us learn it. They offer us an amazing chance to practice over and over this strange, richly powerful, deeply humbling work of saying…and meaning…and finally understanding… through the disturbing emergence in a dream …“I am that too.” Heartfelt gratitude to each of you who is willing to stay with the otherness, Laura * I had a dream that showed me this: I saw a crash site, emergency vehicles everywhere, looked like a disaster, then I see a geyser of clear water gush up from the center of the intersection! Somehow the emergency had become an emergence. Gives me hope. ** See David Richo, How to Be an Adult for a clear, simple guide to shadow transformation.  Autumn at Fire by Night Individual Dreamwork –
Pandemic-friendly discounts END at midnight Wednesday Sept. 30. Thanks to all who have taken me up on the offer! Email me by the 30th to book your individual sessions at $75 each or four for $280. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Something new: Dream Emergence Survival Kit for Group Dreamwork Curious about group dreamwork? Book a one-time dream circle for your small group or circle of trust. You’ll learn the basics of group dreamwork, practice three ways of exploring your own dreams, and reach into your creative depths for some embodied dream-tending that helps you carry your dream’s wisdom into waking life. You’ll be prepared to handle future dream emergences - alone or together. 2 hour group meeting ($200) 4 hour workshop ($400) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Groups: All groups are set for now. If you’d like to be on the waiting list to join in January, please email me at laura@firebynight.net. I doubt many of you noticed, but I never got that June newsletter off the ground. Not for lack of trying! I had a series of vivid dreams, all set in white churches, that I wanted to write about as being relevant to our collective work with racism these days. But no, this series of images has more to teach me before I write. So I want to share just one simple phrase which applies to dreamwork and any kind of emerging work or wisdom. It’s been helpful to me in many ways, and is especially useful now as I navigate through Covid-based social/family/school challenges; antiracist learning and unlearning; work and financial disruptions, and general dismay. Here’s your phrase: “Not yet speechripe.”  Isn't that beautiful? Not yet speechripe comes from the poetic, image-rich Anglo Saxon language, the precursor to modern English. It means exactly what it says. It means something has come up for you. You kind of get it, sort of see it, but you can’t really say yet what it is. It’s a state of dawning consciousness, in which the mind is just about to grasp something of great significance. It’s on the tip of your tongue, but words are not how you can experience or share the experience. In dreamwork, that not yet speechripe feeling is often indicative of a big change in progress. Something that will rearrange your sense of who you are and how you fit into the larger picture.  The dreams I can't yet write about are helping me viscerally experience something of white supremacy. How pervasive it is in my life and culture. How calmly powerful. How it has shaped everything I know and do. And how it limits my imagination about how I can contribute to a just society. How this era changes us may be not yet speechripe for you– but certainly it will change you and all of us.  Please, let’s do two things. Let’s learn. And let’s do better. I love what Layla Saad says, in Me and White Supremacy, “Just try to be a better ancestor.” How? Dreams do help. When I dream repeatedly of white churches, I am looking at the “white church” part of myself as well as the influence of white churches over time in my culture. The dream doesn’t show me one church: it shows me many different ones, and only a few are familiar. As I begin my dreamwork, I can list all my associations – personal and collective – about “white church.” I can learn more about how white churches chose and didn't choose to serve justice in the civil rights era and beyond. And I can also simply put myself … literally… at the threshold of an actual white church, and see what comes. Lately I have been doing just that – spending time outside my own literal white church each morning, and meditating on the blessings and burdens in my legacy of being a lifelong white churcher. There are many. Understanding where I stand - the setting I am in, both in dreams and waking life - helps me catch on to my perspectives from here. They are limited, but open to a vision of justice and mercy and full inclusion for all people.  Lately, the young neighborhood hawks and their parents scream to each other all day. I can't imagine what they could be going on about, but they start at dawn and keep it up all day. Their cries are like the words - from dreams, from newscasts and podcasts and books and articles and each others' stories and the streets full of protestors- that challenge everyone in earshot to get woke and stay woke. So I'm getting woke. Meanwhile I'll wait, not yet speechripe, for whatever is truly mine to say. Deep dreams, Laura  Time to Sign up for Fall...FIRE BY NIGHT DREAM GROUPS I've moved all my groups online and it's working beautifully! Some dreamers say the focus and depth in virtual groups is even better than an in-person group. NOW you can dream with us from anywhere! Fall dream groups begin the first week of September. 8 meetings, every other week. Let me place you, or gather your own group of 4-6 dreamers. What do you do in a dream group? You will -
Email me to schedule a conversation at laura@firebynight and learn more at firebynet.com.   So much trouble in the world. I trust we're naming these things, praying about them, and meeting each other with as much equanimity as we can muster and as much grace as we are given. If you're like me, you want to do something that "matters.” But what? That "really matters?" The other day, my walk took me past the Glendale Elementary School flagpole, which reminded me of Ivey Mae Lewis, and a story I want to share about “doing something that matters.” So much trouble in the world. I trust we're naming these things, praying about them, and meeting each other with as much equanimity as we can muster and as much grace as we are given. If you're like me, you want to do something that "matters.” But what? That "really matters?" The other day, my walk took me past the Glendale Elementary School flagpole, which reminded me of Ivey Mae Lewis, and a story I want to share about “doing something that matters.” Ivey Mae’s name, along with dozens of others, is carved on a plaque near the flagpole, honoring those who made significant donations to the school. Ivey Mae went to my church, and I knew her only slightly as a retired first grade teacher with slow drawl and gorgeous Betty Davis eyes. One day, to make conversation, I asked about her career. She was silent a minute, looked me over, and said quietly, almost whispering, like it was a secret, “I taught nearly a thousand children to read.” I burst into tears. Can you imagine how that would feel? To know you gave the world a thousand readers? This puts me in mind of the old hero storyline: After great challenges, those who follow their call finally reach the point of “receiving the boon,” where they experience such bliss, riches, insight, or meaningful wounding (or all of the above) that they can hardly stand up to walk back home. But remember: the point of the journey is not receiving the boon. The point of the journey is sharing the boon. So whatever it is that transforms and enlightens you, that reveals your true self, that opens worlds and saves your soul and reunites you to the human race and shows you your true Belovedness – that is only half the story. Now you have to bring back that Gift to your ordinary world.  Remember this too: as we travel back, blessed and burdened by the discovery of our essential Gift, the boon transforms us. Who we are and what we bring are re-created by the journey. Maybe you discover your essential belovedness – and it turns to acts of compassion that bewilder you. Or you discover your creativity – and you find yourself engaging the divine possibility in any situation. Surrendering fear manifests in curiosity about everything frightening or strange. By the time you return, the Gift is not what you give – it’s what makes a Giver out of you. Over time, your offerings might change, but always at the heart of them is the lively, essential relationship between you, and your Gift, and the Giver. Dreams are one way we learn how to embody our Gift. For now, dreams lead me to sharing dreamwork. But being a dreamworker isn't the boon, nor is it the main way I am called to share the gift, which, as best as I can say at the moment, is the shocking awareness of my essential belovedness. What am I to do in this disorienting hour in our collective history? I really do not know. But in my dream I see a wounded wolf outside the church door - and I'm sure that a right response to the current situation will feel like a loving, courageous response that wolf. The Dreamgiver and the Giftgiver are one and the same. Staying in alignment with that sacred source makes it possible to respond from soul, not ego. Ivey May must have had a powerful encounter with the BoonGiver. Clearly, it graced her with whatever it took to walk through the door of a first-grade classroom every day, for decades, and teach a thousand children to read. And you? May you remember your Gift - the freely given grace that you’ve had to struggle so nobly to receive. Listen for your calling – now, in this time - that shapes your Gift to meet the needs and longings of the world’s heart. Let's help each other stay aligned with that. Our world needs your giving to come from there. One more thing: Don't be surprised if it you never know what it is that you give: few of us can point to a thousand readers, and I know Ivey Mae gave those children much more than literacy skills. Just trust, as Paul says, the Source who "by the power within us, is able to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine." Deep dream blessings, Laura P.S. About Ivey Mae’s husband: He had some other kind of encounter with the Boongiver and I can only say that he converted the garage into a Jungle Room with a wraparound mezzanine, fake zebra rugs, and a Wurlitzer on which he played 40’s swing tunes in his Hawaiian shirts amongst the trailing vines. He brought home some Boon, let me tell you. If your Gift is wild joy, live it large. I've learned that Zoom space is a real place, a thin place –and it is made for liminal sharing and honest intimacy. For now, all groups are on Zoom. It works!  "Me reading my dream journal!" (a card from Carrie, FBN dreamer) Summer dream groups are about to start. Email me to learn more: laura@firebynight.net. Thursday nights and Monday afternoons are open for new dreamers! You can dreamgroup from anywhere! ********************** If you’re having puzzling, powerful dreams lately, let’s do some 1:1 dreamwork to learn how the “wholemaking nearness of God” is transforming you and your world. Pandemic pricing extends through June. Go to www.firebynight.net to learn more. Thursday nights and Monday afternoons are open for new dreamers! You can dreamgroup from anywhere! If you’re having puzzling, powerful dreams lately, let’s do some 1:1 dreamwork to learn how the “wholemaking nearness of God” is transforming you and your world. Pandemic pricing extends through June. Go to www.firebynight.net to learn more.   FOR THE JUNG AT HEART Join us by Zoom to discuss Jung’s wonderfully readable autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. We will talk about Chapters 5-8 on Sunday June 14, 2:30-4:30. So that we can send your invitation, please register at https://www.nashvillejungcircle.org/onlinebookdiscussion. (Free) DREAMING AT THE LIBRARY: In June, Elizabeth Sanford and I are teaching an online class on how to turn your dream into a fairy tale and create a Dream Story Book. Follow me on Instagram to learn when it’ll post. LauraHuffDreamworker. (Free) Boongiving and Givebooning is happening all the time.Here’s a song that describes how it works in psychospiritual terms: “The Wholemaking Nearness of God” from one of our Haden Institute stars: teacher, musician, and dreamworker Sheri Kling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPPKh0-otoA&t=10s (You can just dance to it and understand it that way if you don't catch the lyrics.)  My grandmother, Mattie Lou HIxon, with one of her many many first grade classes. She had the Gift too.
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