The poet, book entrepreneur, and first amendment advocate Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away last week at 101. After a stint in the military during World War II, he returned home a pacifist. He’d seen enough. While he was among the many post-war poets to take American poetry out of its stilted University conservatism and into the angst underlying Eisenhower’s suburban America, it was his bookstore and publishing house that changed America. Yes, a case could be made that everything of the free speech movement in the early 1960s can owe its origins to Sir Lawrence. He started a small press, New Directions, and among the early books published was a little-known book titled “Howl” by Allen Ginsburg. That book was the subject of a lawsuit, which Ferlinghetti defended as a right to free speech under the First Amendment. He won, and so did democracy.

While I lived in Berkeley, I had two stomping grounds; one was Moe’s on University Avenue, the other across the bay in San Francisco – City Lights. I once crossed the street in that neighborhood and found myself walking next to Allen Ginsburg. Our conversation was brief and mainly about the weather – an unusually hot day in the city accustomed to fog.

I might have been in seminary, but I wanted to be a writer…a poet but lacked the courage of my convictions to choose that path with questionable opportunities for remunerable work. Theology and Philosophy intrigued me, and the life of a Pastor offered a steady salary.

The first time I read a poem was in the fifth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Sylvia Vok, had us read a little Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. I loved Whitman, such free and soaring language that took me places I didn’t even know I wanted to venture.  She then assigned a project of writing a poem. Mine was selected along with a few others to appear in published form in the class newsletter, a typed document reproduced on a mimeograph, circulation nearly 20. I’ve been writing personal poetry ever since. Now that I’m older, most of them make me laugh at my naivete. 

Later, a college professor introduced me to other works in a class called “The Literature and Psychology of Mysticism.”  Pablo Neruda's poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Gary Snyder became staples of my reading diet and searched for used copies of their books at Moe’s. One day I saw a flyer for an evening of poetry with Robert Bly. I recognized the name as a translator of Rilke and Neruda’s work, so I went.

This irascible Nordic from Minnesota read his poems, played the dulcimer, and recited translations of others with such drama and passion. He offered insights into symbols and metaphors and laments for his fractured relationship with his father. Somewhere through the reading, he talked of dreams and the work of the psychologist Carl Jung.  I’d read his “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” in that college class. Now dreams and poetry were connecting in ways I’d never know.

I was a young man, maybe 23, struggling to assemble a structure that would allow me to manage my internal chaos with a world calling me to a career and a mortgage. After a marriage that had been an excuse for both of us to move away from our parents, I entered therapy. There I began an exploration of my life, my dreams, and a calling that I simply could not escape.

A mentor in seminary and local pastor, Don Green, took me under his wing and introduced me to ways of reading scripture that invited an entrance. I could put myself inside the story and let it do its magic. In one brief conversation, he commented, “I listened to a local rabbi speak last week. He was talking about Jacob wrestling with an angel and said: “You know, that’s what religion is all about, a wrestling with God.” I nodded as if I knew what he was speaking of, but on the inside, my head exploded.

“What is this story? Where can I find it? Why has no one told me this before?” I later searched and found the narrative in Genesis; I then discovered Martin Luther’s commentary. He said that essentially Jacob is wrestling not just with an angel but with the very word of Christ. I noted the tale involves Jacob's dream and later discovered that his discernment of dreams would be passed on to his son Joseph. The latter would later gain quite a reputation in Egypt as an interpreter of Pharaoh's dreams.

 While my classmates were reading a dreadfully boring two-volume faux leather systematic theology text, I walked the bay area streets and sat in cafes reading and writing my dreams and poetry. I snuck through those seminary classes that seemed stilted and stale with barely passing grades. But I devoured others that connected my world of poetry, prose, and the dream world. One professor sharply critiqued my performance, indicating I’d never be much of a pastor or preacher. I resented his words at the time but knew their accuracy based on my efforts in his classroom.

I spent time in museums, explored the burgeoning punk rock scene of the early ’80s, found escape in a sensory deprivation tank and an occasional hallucinogenic. My therapist would bring me back to earth in our sessions, and in many ways, kept me from moving to the coast, living in a motorhome, and drinking cheap wine at 7 a.m.

Slowly Jacob kept wringing in my head. The fact that people in the scriptures could wrestle with angels and demons and come away blessed. In that was hope, and hope was needling its way in me.

A friend got me a summer job working alongside a man who owned several properties. Mr. Lincoln was a silver-haired stoic Scandinavian type. I cut grass, repaired windows, and carted away junk in a wheelbarrow. He died at the end of that summer. His funeral service filled the church, and all I remember from that day was the cemetery on a beautiful sunny day in the hills on Oakland. After the graveside ceremony concluded, Mrs. Lincoln walked over to me to thank me for coming and then added, “you know, you’ll make a fine pastor someday.” I smiled, walked back to my car, and drove east for several hours.

A year later, I moved to the Midwest for an internship, met another woman whom I still love to this day, and made the shift into the blessing that Jacob taught was possible for those who wrestle. After four decades, the poetry and dreams, and scriptures remain, but the wrestling never goes away. For the longest time, I thought it was a match to conquer; now I realize it’s a life to live.

Recently, I had a dream that takes place beneath an ancient Roman city park in an underground cavern where I am speaking to a large group of people who have come at the birth of a new church. In the middle of my speech, I say, “This is not a church where you will find the answer, although there are answers along the way.”

Ferlinghetti's commitment to free speech and a small publishing house opened up a kind of democracy of thought in our nation and my soul.

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This led me to a lifelong interest in poetry and dreams...my own, others, and the deep connection between dreams and religion. Did you know that evolutionary psychologists theorize that humans gave birth to belief out of their telling their dreams around the campfire?

In my book, Everyday Spirituality, I discuss the value of attending to our dreams in the chapter on sleep.  You’ll also find a brief discussion of the frequency of dreams in the Bible. This winter, I’m slowly making my way through Kelley Bulkeley’s Dreaming in the World's Religions. Wow. Dreams are everywhere in the world. 

The poets have often connected us to the world in ways similar to the way dreams connect us to the underworld. Mary Oliver describes the complexities of a dream in which her deceased father appears in “A Visitor.”  The poet-philosopher David Whyte describes the conversational nature of life. He suggests our calling as humans is to be incarnational creatures who bring that which is deep within us to full fruition in the world while acknowledging how great a challenge those efforts be. 

Does this area of Poetic Dreaming interest you? 

I’m considering a new venture. Once a month, I invite a group of people who are interested in exploring their dreams. This dream group meets for one hour via Zoom. We’ll hear a dream from one of us and then reflect on it using the dream work technique developed by Robert Haden, who founded the Haden Institute, where I am currently studying Spiritual Direction.

This is not for everyone, and I get that. But, there may be a few of you who want to dive into this world of dreams. Drop me a line here.