Wisdom and the Word:

Returning to the Mayan altar, we see a deep purple candle sitting among purple flowers, facing West, the place where the Sun melts into the horizon and night begins. For the Tseltal Maya, night is the time when God speaks to us in our dreams.

In the Pop Wuj, the sacred story of creation begins in darkness: "...everything vibrated in the obscurity, in the night...only The Architect, the Former, the Infinite, the Hidden Serpent were there...great sages, great thinkers originated [there and] the spirit of the heavens... came and then spoke here with the one who comes from the infinite, The Hider of the Serpent here in the obscurity, at night." Pop Wuj: Book of Time (Mythic-historic poem of the Ki-ché, translated from the original text by Adrián I. Chávez), Bibilioteca de Cultura Popular, Ediciones del Sol, ©1994, p. 33.

"God speaks first in one way, and then in another, although we do not realize it. In dreams and in night-visions, when slumber has settled on humanity and people are asleep in bed..." Job 33: 14-15.

Poetry for Meditation:

What you can live/wholeheartedly/will make plans/enough/for the vitality/hidden in your sleep.

To be human/is to become visible/while carrying/what is hidden/as a gift to others.

To remember/the other world/in this world/is to live your/true inheritance.

You are not/a troubled guest/on this earth,/you are not/an accident/amidst other accidents/you were invited/from another and greater/night/than the one/from which/ you have just emerged.

Now, looking through/the slanting light/of the morning/window toward/the mountain/presence/of everything/that can be,/what urgency/calls you to your/one love?/What shape/waits in the seed of you to grow/and spread/its branches/against a future sky?

Excerpted from David Whyte's "What to Remember When Waking" (from The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press, ©2006, pp. 26-27.

Contemporary Reality:

Recalling and sharing dreams is a daily practice among the Maya who say, "If we don't dream, we aren't living."

During one of visits to Chiapas, we traveled to a small community nestled in the mountains of Chiapas where elders and leaders were meeting to discuss the challenges posed by increased migration of men away from their families in search of jobs. Many women were struggling to do the work of tending fields and children while their husbands and older sons worked in distant places for months at a time. At the end of a full day of discussion, the elders invited everyone to dream of possible responses to these problems. We all went to bed, and in the morning we met to share how God had spoken to us through our dreams.

Questions for Reflection:

How might I pay closer attention to my dream life, to notice how God may speak to me at night?

How might I access this source of inner wisdom, vitality and creativity to help me in my daily life?

Prayer: 

Creator God, help me take the time to listen to your wisdom as spoken through my dreams.