The Jesse Tree: Sleep – What Joseph’s Dreams Teach a Restless Heart

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree

This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.  

“I’ve always had a soft spot for Joseph,” my spiritual director said, “maybe it’s because I’m named after him.”  Joe directed me through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, a series of meditations on the life of Jesus. 

We were in the midst of the Christmas story.  The exercises invite us to walk around the scene in our imagination, to notice the sights, sounds, even smells in the environment.  I was quickly overwhelmed.  Labor and delivery aren’t serene or silent.  It’s a loud, messy, vulnerable, and at times, urgent process.  When you consider the fact that Mary and Joseph were far from home, in a crowded place, possibly sharing birthing quarters with livestock, the scene becomes more chaotic.  

In my imagination I was frenetic.  What could I do to help?  Surely there were sheets to wash, straw to change, animals to corral, receiving blankets to prepare, water to carry.  Joe listened intently.  “What does all that activity produce in you?”  He asked.  “It makes me tired,” I said.  

Day Twenty-five – Sleep: Joseph 

“Joseph is a remarkable saint,” Joe continued.  “He’s clearly active and decisive, but the two times in his life he has an encounter with an angelic messenger, he’s asleep.”  This insight wasn’t news to me.  I knew the story of Joseph and his two dreams.  In one, Joseph is told not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.  In the other he is told to take Mary and the child and flee the country because Herod wants to kill them.  In both cases Joseph gets up and does as the dream directs.  

Like his ancient forbear of the same name, Joseph is able to remember and interpret dreams as communications from God, even when they take unexpected turns through Egypt.  If there was anything admirable, to my mind, about Joseph it was in his willfulness in acting upon the dreams he received.  I’d appreciated Joseph as a man of action, strong, quiet, loyal, and unyielding when it came to pursuing God’s purposes.  

Joe seemed to be pointing to something else, something I wasn’t grasping.  “Can God speak to you while you’re asleep?” Joe asked directly.  “I suppose,” I said, a little more sheepishly than I wanted.  “Then, why is your spiritual life so frenetic?”  The question hung between us.  

I tend to approach life with God the way I approach everything else, anxiously, intensely, concerned that I’ll miss out on the really good stuff if I let myself take a break.  This intensity is exhausting and breeds resentment I’m embarrassed to name.  But what if the God we’re seeking to know can meet us in sleep?  What if life with God requires time to dream?  

How might your life with God expand to include sleep and other unforced rhythms of grace?