{"id":26980,"date":"2017-06-08T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T07:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=26980"},"modified":"2017-06-08T00:01:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T07:01:27","slug":"dream-about-wrestling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/dream-about-wrestling\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dream About Wrestling With — Uh, Who Was That Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Detail of a column in the Wurzburg Cathedral — a dream about wrestling? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

I had a dream about wrestling the other night. It maybe could\u00a0have been a message from my deep psyche, some part of me that knows more than I know. Or maybe even a missive from God, the one I’ve been interrogating\u00a0these past months, years and decades.<\/p>\n

I dreamed\u00a0I was about to write a post for this blog. As usual I was short on time and even shorter on the inspiration needed to knock out weekly\u00a0post No. 465 in the series that began\u00a0eight, count ’em, eight\u00a0years ago.<\/p>\n

The post I was contemplating was definitely going to be a cop-out, a sketchy, but quickly writeable thing. It was going to quote something one of my kids had just said (in my dream) about wrestling. Yes, wrestling. No\u00a0one I know has\u00a0any interest in wrestling, but in my dream life\u00a0several of my kids had become\u00a0avid\u00a0wrestlers.<\/p>\n

Peter (I think it was Peter) had\u00a0this advice to give:<\/p>\n

“When you’re wrestling somebody,” Peter\u00a0wanted me to know, “never, ever let go of your opponent. Hold on tight at all costs. Get\u00a0a grip on your opponent\u00a0and keep it.”<\/p>\n

My dream-self\u00a0concluded that that tidbit of advice was just enough, barely, to make\u00a0a post. It was thin and most of my readers would have no use for wrestling advice. But I convinced myself that it was just enough to pass\u00a0for the morsel of \u00a0wisdom that I attempt each week to pass on to my readers, faithful and otherwise.<\/p>\n

Before I could write that post I woke up, and what\u00a0a relief that was. Whew. I had not actually posted this flimsy and, to my readers, irrelevant post.<\/p>\n

Moments later, fully awake,\u00a0it dawned on me. The title of my book\u00a0was “Wrestling with God,” for heaven’s sake. Researching that book had been\u00a0a ten-year pilgrimage through the religions of the world, looking for a way to believe in God in the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n

I’d been wrestling with God since my young adulthood — year in and year out I’d been asking myself (and anyone who would listen) The Big Questions. Is there a God? What’s God like?<\/p>\n

In all that time\u00a0I\u00a0had not come across any tight, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt answers to The Questions. But the dream about wrestling — was it maybe just a trickle of an answer coming out of the Big Nowhere? Was\u00a0that\u00a0up-against-my-writing-deadline dream a message\u00a0that cried out to be taken seriously?<\/p>\n

I think it was. And wherever it came from — the depths of my psyche or the heights of heaven — the message was clear: Yeah. Yeah. You might not know the first thing about God, the Divine, the Force, the Mystery. But hang on tight to It, whatever It is. Hang on for dear life. That’s all you need to know, and do, for now.<\/p>\n

More tales from My Rocky Spiritual Journey at “Which Way America? Compassion With Francis, or Vitriol With Trump?”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “The San Juan Ecosystems. The Woods Are Alive, and So Are the Meadows and Beaches.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

A dream about wrestling — sound familiar? Read about the biblical story of\u00a0Jacob <\/a>wrestling\u00a0with the angel.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

I had a dream about wrestling the other night. Was it a message from my deep psyche — or the heights of heaven? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1910,1911,1912,34,1913,1914,82,56,96,1441,1915,1916],"class_list":["post-26980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-a-message-from-god","tag-blog-deadlines","tag-creating-blog-posts","tag-dont-miss","tag-dreams-of-god","tag-jacob-wrestles-the-angel","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-peter","tag-the-big-questions","tag-wresting-with-god","tag-wrestling","tag-wurzburg-cathedral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}