Tags
coffee and egg, contemplative, dream interpretation, dreaming, new life, Silent prayer, simplicity
A little while ago I had one of those ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ kind of dreams. I dreamt I was trapped in a grey box with no lid. A friend and I managed to escape and made a furtive dash across the road to celebrate with some breakfast. We had two places to choose from, a greasy spoon café (my Brit friends will know what I mean) and a nondescript looking place leading to a ‘wild card’ choice. I convinced my friend to go with the wild card choice – as you do. We opened the door to the nondescript place to find a colourful, fresh little café which was small and simple but which felt like ‘home’ straightaway. The menu had only two items coffee and an egg, you could choose a variation of coffee and egg because according to the owner that’s all people need for breakfast.
There were other layers to the dream and plots and twists, but the coffee and the egg choice really stood out for me, especially in the context of the bright and vibrant café in contrast to the tight grey box I had escaped from. (that and the fact that I am not a huge fan of egg, especially not for breakfast. Bleugh!)
Coffee … wake up?
Egg … new life?
So the question I asked myself was where do I need to wake up to new life? Where in my life am I feeling tight and constrained, searching for new options?
I let the question sit for a few days … and then one Sunday morning I headed out to join some friends for their Sunday worship service. It’s a very small community in PMB who meet twice a month for worship, one week involves silent contemplative prayer only and the other includes worship and a message. I happened to visit on a Sunday when we were ‘worshipping’, read: ‘singing’.
There were three guitars present and thirty open hearts, we were invited to sing or to listen, eyes open, eyes closed, to pray aloud or in our hearts. Sharon led us in a simple yet profound message and then we sat in quiet prayer again. I walked out of there feeling untwisted and calm, quiet and peaceful – alive, Awake. It has struck me in the weeks since I was there that the beauty of that morning was not in what was said or done but rather what was NOT said or done. The beauty and life I experienced was in the simplicity and the quiet, in the bringing of ourselves before God as we were, leaving words and ceremony behind and entering into a place of quiet acceptance and vulnerability.
I was reminded yet again of the need for quiet, for silence with God, silence IN God and for simplicity. Sometimes that’s all we need…
It’s certainly what I needed.