The Two Are One: Delving Deeper into Some of Sunday's Sermon Themes
In dream work, doubling is deeply significant. The appearance of two companions, the repetition of an incident, the pairing of black and white, even the depiction of the dreamer as spouse or lover all hint at a reality greater than can be contained in a single person or story.
Thus, one of the first rules of interpretation is to recognize when a motif appears twice in a dream, it is calling me to pay attention. Something new is happening and I'm invited to explore it from more than one perspective. Last night, in a series of vivid, scary dream fragments, I appeared as myself visiting a gay couple with a dangerous reptile farm, a penitent before a maternal judge in black, and finally, as Captain Kirk from Star Trek, charged with investigating the death of my wife. The dreams were interrupted by wild political rallies in which the companions of love were winning over the forces of hate to forge a new republic.
My dreams also took me to the Bible, to yesterday's reading about the two-as-one in the Garden of Eden. As I often remind us, the Bible contains multiple versions of the same story: two Creation narratives, two versions of Noah's Ark, two accounts of Moses receiving the commandments, two accounts of Jesus' conception and birth. To us rationalists who demand a clear, linear and accurate account of things, this suggests sloppy editing or a primitive understanding of reality, but to a dream worker it calls us to the truth that all life is expressed through multiple points of view.
As I pointed out yesterday, both Creation stories in Genesis result in the emergence of human beings as a creature that is two-in-one, both male and female, whose ontology, whose essence, is relational. We are not individuals. The moment we separate ourselves, says the second story, we enter the realm of sin. Sin is separation from God and one another, the place where two arrows do not meet, but kill, where brother murders brother and Adam forsakes love for power.
Which brings me to an important distinction: we have two stories in which humanity arises as a single, but differentiated entity. This is important. God created human beings different and equal. This is what we are supposed to be.
Then sin enters the picture. Sin reconfigures us in ways we don't like, but also in ways we can leverage. In the vocabulary of sin, human beings become separate but "equal." This is not the same as different and equal. Different and equal opens us to a healthy and diverse ecosystem, a dynamic of life. Separate but "equal" results in naked domination, enslavement, racism, war and death.
As a former Russian studies student, I spent many years pondering the first Red Wave that was the Bolshevik Revolution. One of its architects, Aleksandr Zinoviev, famously remarked that the only point of revolution was the concentration of power. Bolsheviks were often depicted as rapists in leather jackets. In this scenario, power cannot be achieved without the destruction of mutuality. Only when the male subdues the female can the Red Wave rise.
I leave you to make your own connections.
Thus, one of the first rules of interpretation is to recognize when a motif appears twice in a dream, it is calling me to pay attention. Something new is happening and I'm invited to explore it from more than one perspective. Last night, in a series of vivid, scary dream fragments, I appeared as myself visiting a gay couple with a dangerous reptile farm, a penitent before a maternal judge in black, and finally, as Captain Kirk from Star Trek, charged with investigating the death of my wife. The dreams were interrupted by wild political rallies in which the companions of love were winning over the forces of hate to forge a new republic.
 |
| Adam and Eve by Mahmoud Said, 2018 |
As I pointed out yesterday, both Creation stories in Genesis result in the emergence of human beings as a creature that is two-in-one, both male and female, whose ontology, whose essence, is relational. We are not individuals. The moment we separate ourselves, says the second story, we enter the realm of sin. Sin is separation from God and one another, the place where two arrows do not meet, but kill, where brother murders brother and Adam forsakes love for power.
Which brings me to an important distinction: we have two stories in which humanity arises as a single, but differentiated entity. This is important. God created human beings different and equal. This is what we are supposed to be.
Then sin enters the picture. Sin reconfigures us in ways we don't like, but also in ways we can leverage. In the vocabulary of sin, human beings become separate but "equal." This is not the same as different and equal. Different and equal opens us to a healthy and diverse ecosystem, a dynamic of life. Separate but "equal" results in naked domination, enslavement, racism, war and death.
As a former Russian studies student, I spent many years pondering the first Red Wave that was the Bolshevik Revolution. One of its architects, Aleksandr Zinoviev, famously remarked that the only point of revolution was the concentration of power. Bolsheviks were often depicted as rapists in leather jackets. In this scenario, power cannot be achieved without the destruction of mutuality. Only when the male subdues the female can the Red Wave rise.
I leave you to make your own connections.
Comments
Post a Comment