Water, Water, Water

This spread from my altered book, Dream Weavings, represents water dreamscapes. Water appeared in my dreams in many forms. As oceans, wide or narrow rivers, shallow streams, trickling springs, waterfalls, natural pools, rain puddles, from sink faucets, and shower heads. Sometimes I am in the water. Sometimes I am avoiding the water. Sometimes I am diving in or stomping through or walking around the water. Sometimes it is frightening and sometimes it is inviting. Sometimes deep and dangerous and sometimes just deep. Other times shallow.

Jeremy Taylor writes that water in dreams symbolizes the emotions. In scripture, water washes and cleans. Maybe it is both. Maybe water invites the dreamer to explore the emotions and to be washed and healed by them. Or maybe by giving the emotions permission to be deep or shallow, the soul, too, has permission to feel them and be in them. Perhaps by diving into the emotional deep, the soul is made well and whole, refreshed and restored.

A friend who shares my artistic space commented on this spread. It frightened her. Admittedly, it is somewhat dark. There is nothing to which to cling. It tosses and carries and threatens to drown, to kill. This is the scary part of the emotional deep. It requires deep feeling, sometimes painful. In some cases, it is death. Death to what stirs them and gives them power. This death feels like drowning. But without death, there is no life. And so, the waters must drown what needs to die so that something new can be born out of them.

For me, the dream catcher on this spread has captured what is good from this watery dreamscape. It is the scrubbing power that water has. From the catcher, I attached sea glass. It is polished and smooth. Sharp edges are rounded. This is what emotions have done for me. They clean me, smooth me, round me. They are powerful forces that must be given expression. If I drown in them, it is so that something else might live. This power that comes from the deepness of the emotions is a gift from God.

 Why fear what is of God? Why fear the dying of what brings life? Why fear the healing power of the emotional deep? And so it is that fear accompanies the invitation of the watery dreamscape. It is an invitation to death and life. To emotional washing. Soul cleaning.