In MID-DECEMBER, I perched in front of my computer for yet another Zoom call. This time around it was to gather with other contemplative women for a look back on 2021. We settled into our chairs, closed our eyes and took a few deep breaths.

“Imagine your inner world as a garden,” my friend Becky suggested, as lush green images began to scroll across my screen.

In my mind’s eye, I saw one of my inner garden beds. But it looked nothing like the abundance of green on the screen before me. No, this particular garden of mine was overgrown. Neglected. Dried up. Dead.

I knew it to be the garden bed that held my previous dreams. Hopes and dreams that, while dead, had not been removed. Instead, they stood there, stooped over in their straggly state, propped against one another lest the whole pile collapse.

It was a has-been garden. A garden of what was. It begged my attention, but I resisted its request. I feared what it wanted was to have the old removed to make room for the new, and I wasn’t having it.

I can’t do it. I just can’t. This garden bed of dried up dreams feels to me like the bedroom of a child who has died and whose parents leave the room exactly as it was because they can’t bear to move on, to allow the space to be used for something new. All they want, all I want, understandably, is to have the old come back to life, for the old was greatly loved.

Around this same time, I began asking God for a word of the year for 2022. A word to pay close attention to. A word of invitation.

I can’t say I was entirely pleased with what came. It hit a raw nerve. It was one word, repeated, first as a verb and then as a noun: dream dreams.

Seriously, God?

In Scripture, these words are found first in Joel 2:28 and again in Acts 2:17: “Your old men shall dream dreams.”
After changing “men” to “women” and reckoning with the idea that God might be calling me old, I settled down, with trepidation, into the words and the invitation they held.

Dream dreams.

This is an audacious invitation, especially to an “old” person who has looked life square in the face. This is a courageous call, and vulnerable at that.

What if my dreams don’t come true? What if COVID or the economy or a gazillion other things are the death of them yet again?

Honestly, God, after the last two years, you want me to dream again? After all that’s dried and died? After all the hopes deferred?

No, thank you. I’ll just sit here beside my garden of what was. Keep company with what used to be. Anything else sounds too risky these days.

But the Spirit kept coming. Relentless, this One! God’s next approach was through the words of Eugene Peterson in The Message.

“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?’ ” (Romans 8:15).

This verse called me out. Named for me what I have been doing. I’ve been grave-tending — and doing so with nary a hint of adventurous expectation. I’m not interested in what’s next. I want what was.

Back to my contemplative group. As I sat with my garden of dead dreams, I began to gently untangle them to see if anything lay beneath. Then I saw it: the greenest of shoots, coming forth with no fear. In truth, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this.

My friend Jen, who holds all the science knowledge I lack, told me dried up and dead plants arch over new growth, creating a biome, a shelter, and warmth where the baby sprouts can grow.

Imagine that! Without my permission, the old was giving birth to the new. It was offering the hospitality and the welcome I had been withholding.

This becomes holy ground. Instead of clinging to what was, these elder plants give themselves for what comes up new. The old doesn’t need to be removed, as I feared. No ripping out of the roots right now. All that’s being asked of me is to allow the new to emerge. To kneel beside these bright green bits and, like the dreams of old are already doing, welcome their presence and nurture their growth.

That, I suppose, I can do.

Dream.