Weekly Message from T. J.

Where Dreams Arise

I’ve been sleeping a lot more. It’s not my fault. It’s my room. For years I sort of ignored much of the wisdom about having a dark, cool place to sleep. Most of the last few years, light spilling in from street lights, from the LED display on my air conditioner, and from neighbors’ homes made the amount of light in my room enough to be able to see my hand in front of my face and easily count to five. I woke up a few times during the night usually, did a little tossing and turning, but it wasn’t a big deal, or so I thought.

Then two weeks ago something happened. A friend asked if I had any curtains I wasn’t using, and I remembered that I had a bunch of old black-out curtains a roommate had put up in the living room to block the large picture window there for some reason. I removed them a while ago and saved them in the corner of a cabinet. So I cheerfully replied I could give him one. And that’s when I got a great idea…and some scissors.

Oh, my friends. It is in the perfect darkness, blocking the spillage of light into my room, that for the first time in years I have known steady, deep, and restorative sleep for the past few weeks. Were my hand in front of my face, I’d never know it. And it was in a conversation last night with one of my mentors and friends, Bill Sinkford, that I remembered and found the prayer he once returned to me to rewrite with the direction, “T. J., say what you mean and say it plain.”

Our faith does not come easy.

At times it feels like it’s easier to say what our faith is not than to say what it is.

But in silence, in listening, and in remembering those we love and those who loved us, we hear again the voice that calls us each here together.

We hold each other now, here, in this time, in this space.

And whether we are letting go of something we are holding on to;

Or whether we are just starting to take hold of something that supports us;

We do it, each soul gathered here, as a community.

If we feel dark times are ahead, let us remember that it is the darkness of our sleep where dreams arise.

May the lights in our lives show the way toward healing, toward wholeness, and toward love. Always toward love.

May it be so. Amen.

It is strange to do something in one’s life that can actually improve one’s own dreams. I dream now in a way I have not for some time, drawing from the dark forgotten corner of a cabinet those shreds of fabric that beat back the light. And the time is coming for many to dream greater dreams, greater ways of being together and loving our neighbors. For the greatest ideas, the ways that waking and sleeping change, are almost always a surprise, and might even come from something we’ve forgotten we have, buried, sleeping in a corner, waiting to rise again.

Sweet dreams, my friends.
Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org