Dream of True Reconciliation

Last night, before I went to bed, I finished watching a Jordan Peterson interview with his long time friend, Charles. They discussed how Charles reconnected with Native American culture after being hideously abused in a residential school. Jordan Peterson brought up the heavy hand of history and the guilt a lot of people have for what one people has done in the past to another people. Charles and Jordan Peterson talked about a type of tribal meeting they went to together (Potlatch? Unsure) where you dance and pass energy to the guests who take their turn to dance and pass the energy back with all joy. Charles talked about how dreams inform him how to carve his art, and that he gets up to sketch images as quickly as possible so he doesn’t forget them.

So I dreamed, woke up, and wrote this down. It seemed worth remembering.

There were many people all together somewhere. Groups of different races. People with many shades of white, brown, and black skin. We were all together, working through racial pain as a group. At one point there was a dance that was passed from person to person. The Native Americans among us encouraged us, saying that whoever felt the joy of the dance should start and stop as they felt led. I couldn’t do it. I felt the right joy and energy at one point, but it was immediately tempered with fear and I let the moment pass me by.

At one point we were asked to separate into our racial groups and do this exercise: we took pieces of paper that someone else had already drawn art on, and we wrote down in pure honesty what made us afraid and why we held back from other racial groups, or tempered our full expression. Then we hung these up on a clothespin-line-wall. People were participating from all groups and putting up their fears, and others were beginning to write responses on the papers and connect with each other in good faith.

I kept trying to write my fears down but the paper kept disintegrating before I was could finish. I was trying to write that I was so afraid of doing a Native dance wrong when it was clearly sacred. I was also afraid because I was taught a certain way about my Christian beliefs, that that mixing it with other beliefs was really dangerous, and that even though I was able to think more in shades of gray than I used to I still didn’t know if this was okay with God and so I wanted to take God into the dance with me and I wanted to go slow and careful. But I was also just afraid I would do it wrong, or I would start doing it right and then become aware of myself and falter and somehow mess up something sacred. Or that my efforts might look like some hideous parody that would be offensive.

A real life friend of mine who is Native American was there in my dream. She and I were going to do some of this work together. This part is fading from memory, but we were talking about the dance and how maybe I was going to try next time I felt that joy. She pressed down really hard on one part of my neckbone, and it crackled and released a whole lot of pain and fear that I was storing there. I thought for sure that the next time I felt the joy come to me, I could dance. But first I started talking about how I felt so disconnected from my own Jewish culture, that I didn’t even know how I could possibly take part in any culture at all.

We as a group were all on a ship together, traveling somewhere, and it seemed like there was great unity happening as we worked through all these things. We couldn’t always understand each others' perspective but it didn’t seem to matter. We were all on the same ship and seeking joy and healing.

This is all I can remember.