A few years ago, as a requirement for my Certificate in Spiritual Direction, I wrote a reflection for the Dreams unit. Using Robert Johnson’s book Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth I began to reflect. Johnson defines “active imagination” as the “conscious use of the imaginative faculty.” Johnson argues that active imagination involves engaging with or having an encounter with images that appear to the imagination—a kind of intentional daydreaming. As a person who daydreamed as a kid, I wanted to scream, “say less!” Johnson’s method led me to a place that I might not have otherwise gone. He proposed imagining verbal conversations with whomever came to mind and entering whatever action, adventure, or conflict that presented itself.
During this exercise the prophet Jeremiah came to my mind, inviting me to imagine a new world. I imagined meeting Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, by the banks of the Jordan. Jeremiah beckoned me to come, sit. We were not quite alone; I could hear the voices of villagers in the distance, but we are isolated enough to be transparent without any self-consciousness. He is weeping as he looks off into the distance. I begin to sob, too, draped in enough fabric that my clothing becomes what I use to wipe my eyes.
Overwhelmed by feeling, I feel an urge to run so that I can find a more secluded place to wail, but he turns, still seated, and with his right arm outstretched motions for me to remain seated. Unable to hold it in any longer, a cry burst from my belly, and I began to moan and weep uncontrollably. I am mourning for what seems like an unredeemable world, one that has traded its freedom for tyranny, its democracy for fascism. In my imagination I hear a rip so loud in the fabric of the national flag, that with each rip, my wails grow louder and louder. I think to myself, “I must be terrifying this prophet,” And yet this sage, this Biblical prophet, turns and nods his head to me for a brief second as if he understands the language of these sounds and begins to wail with me.
We wail over the Jordan River as if we are communicating with the universe itself. These carryings on last an hour or so. Exhausted from our tears, our despair, our vision into the future, we pass out on the lush green banks of the river, back-to-back. Our dreams scan the course of time, wars and rumors of wars, the falling and rebuilding of cities, the height and the decline of civilizations. We sleep for hours into the cool of dusk. A butterfly plays at my nose. Its soft feet awaken me. The clothes I am draped in are drenched, but I notice, hanging on the branches of a nearby tree are new robes made of silk. I exchange the robes I am wearing, for the new ones, so that mine may dry. I do not awaken Jeremiah, but I take my seat next to him again to pray. I begin to believe that our weeping is creating a new world, our prayers are fueling the hope of a new generation. And his resting body reminds me of Jesus, asleep on the boat in the midst of a storm. I am satisfied with this image as I continue praying into the night. My interaction with active imagination ends here, and what it reveals is that it was a useful tool for creating dialogue with unintentional others about the weight of my mind and the vulnerability I felt against empire.
