You're on a merry-go-round, a different kind of merry-go-round than the kind that spins you out of control. It's one of those old wooden ones, twirling gently like a gyroscope, set in motion only if someone runs alongside it, holding onto the bar frames. But you're not the one who's running. No, you're just lying there, prone, on one of the eight or so faded wood sectors that make up the platform, gazing up at the sky on a July day that holds just the hint of a breeze. There must be some faint movement all the way up there too, all the way up where the clouds are, cotton-candy confections moving in slow motion. And you're up there with them, somersaulting your way across the span of their softness, leaping from puff to puff. Now you're tumbling backwards atop a white horse, your own Pegasus, flexing to the escapades of your celestial acrobatics. Then your head jerks. Somebody's called your name from a long ways away....the other side of the playground, the back door. Time to go home. Time for dinner. Time to remember time.
Blink your eyes. Add a few decades. You're stretched out on the sands of summer--Jones Beach, Long Beach Island, Race Point--it doesn't really matter. You're there, almost all of you. Almost because there's the you that's drifting out to sea. You're a tiny speck, a microorganism that's self-knowing, carried by the waves on the surface of the element that comprises the greater share of our planet and ourselves, carried now into the depths of Homer's wine-dark sea, the same sea that transported Odysseus as swimmer and sailor on his long journey home, the same sea that provides safe transport or ominous tempests for other travelers. Then you come to. You sit bolt upright. Water is streaming down your face. Salt invades your nostrils. That ornery little cousin filled up her bucket and spotted you first, leashing a flash flood on the gentle waves of your meandering.
Paying the rent, watching the market, knotting up over how some imminent buyout will effect you--such things are far away when you savor the pleasures of midsummer daydreams. Playful daydreaming is an antidote to worry. Periodic daydreaming prevents us from clogging the arteries of our imaginations and stretches our capacity for mindplay that so commonly disappears as we assume the guise of maturity.
"When there is a relatively clear delineation between what is fantasy and reality in a person's life, engaging in extensive daydreaming may be quite pleasurable," writes psychologist Jerome Singer in The Child's World of Make-Believe. ".... studies carried out on adult daydreaming suggest again and again a dimension of positive vivid daydreaming which is characteristic of normal individuals and which seems to involve a great deal of enjoyment of fantasy without...any necessarily neurotic consequences."
Whew....we certainly don't want to succumb to neurosis. I wonder though if the hazy, hot, and humid summer of 1999 doesn't invite a tad more inclination to letting our minds wander than we might permit if the heat index itself were less neurotic, more cool-headed. But such is not the case, and our spirits yearn for moments of pause; our work ethic gives into the summer's dictum that time out is the stuff of survival.
In fact, as I began to shape this sermon, I quipped to one friend that if it's daydreams I'm talking about, maybe I should just stand behind the pulpit and let my mind wander. It was tempting.
"The sun beats down; it is a time for pause....Even the trees seem resting for a time as if to meditate and gather strength," we read earlier. (RR # 547, SLT) There are compelling elements of redemption in the practice of daydreaming.
If we go for long stretches without sleep, we hallucinate. It seems we must dream, or another faculty will take over inside, prompting hallucinations, where the critical distinction between fantasy and reality is blurred and we visit for a time the realm of psychosis. Dreams are preferable, even if some of our dreams are nightmares. Dreams constellate fragments of our waking life, often in surreal figments that play on the screen of our inner cinemas. Some say dreams tap into a subterranean stream flowing through the psyche of humanity, across time and space. But even Carl Jung said the conscious is where it's at, and our waking lives are the realm in which we live out an attempted integration of ourselves, individual and collective.
When our waking lives--for most of us, our daytime lives--fill beyond our capacity for work and stress and heat, a welcome alternative offers itself up in the form of daydreaming. For a few moments at least, we're on vacation. I wonder if those of us who don't spend at least some moments of our waking lives ensconced in daydreams are more vulnerable to nightmares.
Daytime respites are so highly thought of in some parts of our world, that the siesta is a time-honored tradition. Sweet dreams are induced by the purposeful activity known as a nap. Such diversions generally prevail in places where summer enjoys an extended season. At 2:00 pm in Athens, for example, residents are well into the land of nod, merchants included. Only tourists are shuffling about, intent on "making every moment count." Can you imagine all the shops in this great city closing down from one to four every afternoon? "A nap," you'll reply, "You've got to be kidding! I've got far too much to do..."
"...too much to do..." remarks Véronique Vienne, "As ludicrous as it seems, dropping off the edge of consciousness is often the best way to steal the extra time you need to meet crushing deadlines."
She continues her argument. "Burrowing under a light blanket of sleep in the middle of a busy day is not unlike digging an escape tunnel--one that bypasses impossible work schedules, conflicting agendas, and programming headaches....The urge to curl up in the early afternoon is a warning signal that you are running low on common sense and good judgment....Surrendering to slumber does more than just restore the ability to function efficiently--it actually generates that clear and transparent state of mind we call wakefulness."
"Dream on," you will say, still not convinced, to which I answer, "Precisely!"
One might further argue, as attorney for the defense of daydreaming, that it prevents offensive behavior, even violence. Daydreaming, a form of fantasizing, enhances our capacity to tolerate frustration and to distinguish between our own inner processes and external stimuli--such as violence that is so rampant in the media. Jerome Singer cites supporting research, noting that children with a penchant for imagining tend to see many possibilities in a potentially volatile situation. They simply have a larger repertoire of responses. "Given an opportunity to observe fantasy in television either aggressive or nonaggressive in content," he adds, such children are "able to respond emotionally...in ways that [reduce] the likelihood of subsequent, overt aggressive behavior."
I wonder how youngsters spending hours in front of the television or the computer--or adults, for that matter--stunt the gift of their own dreams. When we also consider Marian Wright Edelman's remarks--that "It's easier for kids to get a gun than to check a book out of the library," we're reminded that the results can be deadly. The simple art of daydreaming renders us less vulnerable to canned imagination rife with violence.
Of course daydreaming must be balanced with conventional attentiveness. I recall teaching my daughter, Sarah, how to drive a car. Now this is an experience in terror for any of us with a slightly overdeveloped need to control. Occasionally with calmness, frequently with a tinge of the frantic, I would tell her or yell at her, to "Pay attention! If you don't remember anything else I tell you about driving, remember to pay attention," at which point she would not hesitate to remind me that there were no brakes on my side. There's a time to dream and a time to pay close attention to what's happening in front of our noses.
Now back to what's behind our noses, what makes our spirits tick, what unleashes our creative gifts.... Time is of the essence. Every novel idea, every prudent political action, every lasting work of art requires a period of gestation. "I need to spin it around in my head," we might say, or, "I need to sleep on it."
"....Everything is gestation and then bringing forth," wrote Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet. "To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating."
I think of Frederick, the little field mouse in the Leo Leonni's book by that name, a book that many of us have read to our children over and over again. Misunderstood by all the other mice, Frederick spent his long summer hours storing up dreams, seemingly doing nothing, while his companions dutifully gathered food for the long winter months ahead; but when winter came, it was Frederick who knew that food for the body went only so far and was ready with a treasure trove of stories for the soul. Frederick knew a lot about gestation and what it takes to survive.
I wonder. What Psalm would ever have become so without a lifting of eyes to the hills and the heavens?
"I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
From whence does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth."
(Psalm 121:1-2)
"When I look at thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars which thou has established;
what is man that thou art mindful of him...?"
(Psalm 8:3-4a)
Who are we? Why are we here? What are the gifts that lie nascent within us? In this long hot summer, we will find respite in choosing our merry-go-rounds wisely.
"The sun beats down; it is a time for pause...." So let go. Take in the wonders of the day unguarded, unconstrained. Somersault on the clouds. Ride the droplets of a wave.
"We gather in reverence before the wonder of life--
The wonder of this moment." (Sophia Lyon Fahs)
The miracle of this day. Carpe diem. Amen. Copyright AllSouls 1999.