Chris' Christian Blog

May 2, 2018

"May 2, 2018" 

Prompt: "In The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater (Flatiron Books, 2018), Alanna Okun explores her practices of knitting and crafting, and how they interact with her writing life and overall well-being. In today's post, try writing about an interest of your own that runs parallel to, or perhaps even informs, your identity as a writer."

My identity as a writer is in large part connected with my identity as a Christian. I am a Christian educator. I teach a Bible class each Wednesday, which means I will be teaching it tonight. I am also going to be teaching the adult Sunday school class at my church. I love teaching Bible and it often shows through as I once maintained a Christian blog and may start doing so once again. Recently I have been struggling with a sleep disorder and spend most of my time tired or sleeping. I have a sleep study coming up next week so I will soon be my old self and back into writing full time. My responsibilities with church also take up much of the time I once spent writing but the main culprit has been lack of good sleep and exhaustion. I'll soon be back into the swing of things.

"Prompt: Zachary Schomburg's poetry collection Fjords Vol. 1 (Black Ocean, 2012) was inspired by his desire to write poems based on the dreams his friends had shared with him. In an interview for the Pleistocene, he explained that part of his process was "e-mailing my friends or having a beer and talking to them about their most interesting dreams or their most recent dreams, and trying to make poems out of them." The resulting poems have the odd clarity of dream logic.

Have you ever written poetry or stories based on your dreams either your own or friends? Let's discuss dreams a bit. Do you believe writing about yours or someone else's dreams can be beneficial? How reliable do you think dream recall is?"

I don't believe dream recall is very reliable unless the dream has been directed by the Holy Spirit. God often talks to people using dreams and if a dream is from God the receiver will vividly remember the content of the dream. These dreams are often visions of future events coming to the person's life or a confirmation of something godly that the person is contemplating. For example when the virgin Mary was found to be pregnant with a child that was not his Joseph who was engaged to her seriously thought she had cheated on him and was considering divorcing her. To save her honor and her marriage God spoke to Joseph in a dream and told him that Mary had not cheated on him but was pregnant with a child implanted by God Himself. She was going to give birth to the Messiah. Thus Joseph married her in good conscience.

God uses dreams to convey messages to individuals. Most of God's messages to men are revealed in His written word so dreams from God are rare. However I firmly believe that they do occur because the same God who spoke to Joseph in dreams is capable of speaking today. Aside from God speaking I don't try to analyze dreams. Dream interpretation is something beyond my capabilities. I feel that dreams are often just that: dreams. They have no real significance. However if a dream is from God you can be sure the dreamer knows God has spoken to them.