#4 - Unpacking Dreams {Refections}

What is up everybody?

My name is Ryan Braley.

I am the pastor at a wonderful church in Elk River, minnesota, central Lutheran church, and I'm here in studio with Mike.

What's that, mike?

How you doing, buddy?

I live in the dream.

Hey, speaking of dreams, I had a dream about a month ago and I want to share it with you guys because I think it was this incredibly profound moment and I've been having some pretty vivid dreams lately.

And anyway, I want to tell you one.

I thought it would be helpful to talk about it with you all because I think it's maybe a call to each of us, even though I had the dream, but I would say what I took from the dream is applicable to each and every one of us.

But anyway, I found this book.

I was at a bookstore in Ohio, I was visiting my sister in Ohio and the book was by a famous psychologist called Carl Jung.

You probably have heard of him, anyway.

A Jung wrote a book called man and His Symbols and it's basically a book about dreams.

So I pick up this book and I'm flying home and I'm reading this book about dreams and I'm not kidding I fall asleep on the plane and I had about a five, I think a five minute nap.

But in that nap I had a dream.

It was an incredibly vivid dream and when I woke up I'm in the middle of the plane and I remembered it instantly and I wanted to shout to the whole plane like hey, everybody, I just had this dream.

I'm reading a book about a dream about dreams by Carl Jung.

I had a dream and it was incredibly vivid and moving and, I think, profound.

But of course I didn't do that.

Maybe I should have, but I didn't yell out on the plane.

But here's the dream.

So I'm at my in-laws house.

They live in Elk River, just down the road and across the street from them are live my brother in law and his wife and their two sons.

Anyway, on my in-laws porch stood my nephew.

His name is Isaac, he's just a.

He's a wonderful young lad.

He's um, he's almost five years old and just a bundle of energy.

I call him Bam Bam from the Flintstones because he's just a wild, like huck fin, kind of a kid.

They live on the river.

He's out catching frogs, running around with his shirt off.

Just a little boy I love.

He's always dirty and just a wild man and I love grabbing him and squeezing him and like just being physical with him.

I just love the little guy and he in my mind he always embodies what I think like youthfulness and young boyhood.

Looks like he just he really does so.

In my dream, isaac was standing on my in-laws front porch and he was wet.

He's got like long flowing blonde hair.

It's real curly and it's like bleach blonde hair and he's wearing this blue polo shirt, like a Ralph Lauren polo shirt with a little red horse.

It's like a navy blue shirt with a red horse and it's the exact same shirt I wore a bunch when I was in, like when I was younger I was in high school, and I love that shirt.

So here's my nephew who's on this porch and he's like sort of this embodiment of youthful energy and young boyhood and he's wearing my shirt and he looks right at me and waves and says bye, ryan and I.

Then I woke up and I was like yo, everybody, I had this crazy dream, but again, I didn't say that, but in my head I knew immediately what the dream meant and it was something like this I'm 40, I'm 40.

How old am I, mike?

I'm 43.

I forget 43 and and I'm kind of coming into that, you know, almost at middle age, and I'm trying to be intentional as I live about going into the second half of my life and being about the right things, growing deeper in in a number of things but just caring about the right things, and I want to be intentional about how I do that.

And so I'm trying to look into this next half of my life and be a man who's present and giving and, you know, serve all those kinds of things.

And here is this little boy in this dream who again embodies youthful energy and maybe my own childhood in some ways, and he's waving goodbye and I thought immediately this was an invitation to move into the second half of life and to really put aside childish things, maybe selfish tendencies that I have.

You know, children tend to be sort of egocentric.

They think about themselves a lot.

When you're really little they think about themselves entirely and and think that the world revolves around them, like literally.

And then as we grow older we go from ideally, we go from being egocentric to maybe like family centric or like tribal centric, which is a great leap to make.

But then ideally you want to keep going and become not just tribal centric, where you only care about your tribe.

You want to become sort of global centric and have a sense of a global community that you're a part of and then from there the next sort of phase of growth back becoming cosmic centric or having just a grander view of life in your place in it.

And so in many ways to grow and mature and and and to become that person, you have to let go of sort of these older ways of doing things and seeing things and being a young, selfish, you know, sort of egocentric in my case, young boy.

And so I thought it was an invitation to do that and I thought it was beautiful.

But here's the crazy thing like Mike, a week later I was thinking about this dream some more and and I was actually talking about it with a friend of mine and he said I wonder if it's an invitation also not an invitation, but really like a warning and I was like what do you mean?

And he's like I wonder if it's also a warning for you to not let go entirely of your childhood self.

And the moment he said that, like it totally resonated with me like yeah, I think there was also this warning like Ryan, don't let go of your youthful self.

So Jesus says this in the gospel is that, hey, truly I tell you, unless you change and become like a little child, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven.

And so I thought it was like yeah, of course, grow up, you know.

I mean Paul says in 1st Corinthians when I was a child, I, I talked like a child, I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child.

But when I became a man, paul writes, I put away the, the childish things behind me.

But I also think there's this invitation to all of us like, don't lose that childhood self, be like a child, like Jesus says.

Like never lose your hope for things to get better or your wild-eyed wonder at the world, like children always just have this wonderful capacity to have wonder and they're enamored by many things, ideally, you know.

And so I think this dream for me was an invitation to move into the second half of life of my eyes wide open, to be a man who gives and serves my community and grows from being egocentric to ethnocentric, to then global, maybe even cosmic centric, for sure, and to grow mature and sacrifice.

But also a warning to never let that little boy go, like my little boy can't drive the car because he'll crash the car, but I want to maintain that youthful exuberance and joy and excitement and wonder at the world.

So my invitation to all of you is as you grow and mature, of course, move into your second half of life or your next phase of life with your eyes wide open, give and and love and sacrifice and let go of childish things, but also never lose that inner child that wants to see the world the way that Jesus sees it.

All.

Right, that's it, that's what I got for you.

So, love you guys.

We'll talk to you soon, peace.