Ten Plagues

I dreamed about ants this morning.  Little black ants, covering every surface.  Gnats, too -- so thick I had to breathe them.  There was some kind of family gathering going on, pretty much oblivious to the ants and the gnats.

I woke up and thought -- the ten plagues.  [See Exodus, the second book in the Bible.  The Prince of Egypt was based on it.]  Then I remembered, last month in Costa Rica I woke up one morning from a dream and thought -- the ten plagues.  I don't remember which plague that one was.  Frogs?  Blood?  It wasn't the deaths of the first-born.  I would remember that, being one myself.

I get these dream series every so often.  For a couple years before I went back to school, I dreamed about vehicles that broke down.  The tire went flat, the axle broke, the runner fell off the sled... The first couple years of my current episode, I dreamed of a young man.  I thought his name was Steve.  I thought he was my depression, though he didn't like it when I called him that.  He always felt threatening in some way.  Then I took a leave of absence from work and learned to work with my dreams.  And in the end, he was always helpful.

I don't remember ever having a series of good dreams.  Why is that?

This morning I told Helen about my dream.  Helen is a spiritual director, and her favorite thing is dream work.  She said, "If you have a bad dream and do dream work with it, you allow it to be instructive and productive, grace-filled and gift.  If you don't do dream work with it, it will continue to feel like just a bad dream."

That proved true with Steve.  So I did a bit of work.  I carried the story forward.  I wonder which plague comes next.

Let this woman go!

photo in public domain