“I dreamed that a river in Thessaly (into whose waters I had returned a golden fish) was coming to save me; I could hear it approaching over the red sand and the black rock … ” —The Immortal, a short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
“… I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways / Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears / I hid from Him …” —The Hound From Heaven, by English poet Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
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Images are very important in dreams. Samuel Coleridge thought the impressions produced by images in dreams are equally important. J. W. Dunne, the English author of An Experiment With Time developed an interest in the subject after certain premonitory dream he had during his stay in Egypt while serving in the army. Something similar happened to yours truly. Ever since my early days I had some premonitory dreams, usually about trivial matters, i.e. seeing a certain face three decades ago and finding that same face in the waitress that served my breakfast at a local cafe. What is the usefulness of such things I do not know but there they are. Every time I am left with the impression of having witnessed something transcendent but the experience ends there. Nothing can be added. Other dreams have a more definite message, such as a couple —completely unknown to me— who appeared to be in Purgatory. They came to me in a dream asking me to pray for their daughter, a young woman trapped in an appalling addiction. I did not know any of them from Adam. Surprisingly, later on I learned that in effect, the young woman was a member of my parish and she was in the particular situation described in that dream. The effect of the image I saw in the dream was quite strong. I was invaded by a sense of pity that I deemed equal to the parent’s emotions. It was like they wanted me to feel the same sadness that they felt. I was moved to pray for those poor souls and their family. I wonder what effect my efforts will produce. Perhaps I will never know. I also noticed that praying for the Holy Souls in Purgatory seem to elicit dreams where some souls appear to thank for the prayers, sacrifices, or a Holy Mass offered for their benefit. Try it and you will see. Pray fervently for the Holy Souls. You and (most certainly) I will need those prayers one day.
In a recent dialog between Jordan Peterson and Eric Metaxas the matter of dreams was addressed. Some phrases have been simplified for clarity. Sometimes it is hard to transcribe what comes impromptu in conversation. The complete video can be seen here. Please read on.
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A dialog between Jordan Peterson and Eric Metaxas (fragment)
Jordan Peterson — I want to ask you why you became a Christian. What terrified you into religious submission and do such things as to studying the Holocaust.
Eric Metaxas — I seemed like the thing to do at the time.
Jordan Peterson — Okay! Well, you went to Yale and you were in their English Department. And that was before you had a conversion. What happened to you? What happened in the conversion and why did you switch your tune?
Eric Metaxas — That is the funniest way of putting it that I’ve ever heard. Thank you for that! Why did I “switch my tune”? I was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church and I had a vague faith. At the time, Yale was considered extraordinarily unreligious, and is now extraordinarily more secular and hostile to genuine biblical faith, and to the American ideas of freedom and so on and so forth.
I foolishly drank that Kool Aid and drifted into genuine agnosticism. I was dramatically lost, really. I wasn’t some proud atheist sinner, I was just lost. Ultimately I found myself (horror of horrors!) moving back with my European immigrant parents who had worked menial jobs to put me through Yale University. They were looking at me and asking: “So, why are you back here again? What are you doing here?” But I was totally lost, and in that season of my life (I was 24) I got this horrible menial job as a proof-reader at Union Carbide in Danbury, Connecticut —the Hebrew word for that is Gehenna— It was awful. But in that misery I met someone who began to share his faith with me. I was initially hostile or at least not wanting to hear it for many months and —to make a long story short— around my 25th birthday. In a nutshell: I had a dramatic miraculous dream in which God spoke to me so unequivocally that there was no going back. I was game over. It was like going to sleep single and to waking up married …
Jordan Peterson — Would you tell me the dream?
Eric Metaxas — Now?
Jordan Peterson — Sure!
Eric Metaxas — It’s actually hard to do justice to it …
Jordan Peterson — No doubt!
Eric Metaxas — It encompasses three parts of my life. The reason it was so staggering to me —because I do not dream very much, and I never had a dream like this. This was another category of dream. It was like having a vision in the context of a dream. I was unconscious at the time, I was sleeping. I have to say a couple of things for background so you get the vocabulary. Number one: I grew up as the son of immigrants. My father is from Greece and like most Greeks, he is inordinately proud of being Greek and wanting to raise his kids in that tradition. So, that was a very important part of my growing up. I am Greek, this is my identity.
Once I was with my father waiting at a light stop when we saw a car that had one of those chrome fish ornaments. This happened in the 1970’s. My father asked me: “Do you know what that means?” And he proceeded to explain to me that the Greek work for fish is ΙΧΘΥΣ, [ichthys] and that is an acronym for “Iēsoûs Khrīstós, Theoû Huiós, Sōtēr” the Greek words for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Our Savior”. So that they used the symbol of the fish because of what the acronym means. My father was thrilled to tell me that was a Greek word and were that came from, so I always associated that sign with Christ after seeing that.
By way of background: fishing was very important to me growing up also, I should say that if I had a hobby (other than watching sitcoms) it was fishing. That was very important to me.
Jordan Peterson — [Interrupting] So, you like to haul things from the depths …
Eric Metaxas — [Jokingly] Don’t get Jungian on me! You do that in your own time!
Basically, around that time, if anyone had asked me “Who are you?” In my gut I felt I was, well, the Greek background —and my family was vitally central to who I was. Secondly, this idea of fishing was my main and only hobby, the thing that I did when I had time. Thirdly, the life of the mind. When I went to Yale, suddenly I cared about the meaning of life. And I realized as an English Major, even at that time because I was trying to figure out the nature of reality by reading these great novels in the western canon, I was putting together the pieces to figure out what is the nature of reality, what is the meaning of life and I was actually doing that, not particularly intentionally —just instinctively. I have to say this so the dream will make sense —I came up as only a pretentious undergraduate could: “I think I’ve got this all figured out! It’s kind of a literary trope. What all religions mean to do (this is when it becomes Freudian and Jungian, you must forgive me!) [can be represented ] by the image of a frozen lake. You have the ice at the top which is like the conscious mind. The ice is the conscious mind. Our goal is to drill through the ice to touch the water which is the collective unconscious. We want to reach the Divinity, the Godhead.”
Again, that is Jung’s idea not the Bible’s idea. The idea that God is the collective unconscious. So, I had that image that I developed as an undergraduate. So that is what all religions are trying to do: drill through the conscious mind to touch the other side, the collective unconscious. That is the kind of newagey idea of the divinity, the Godhead, or whatever that is for them. So I was bringing all of that into my 24the year of life and around my birthday I had this dream.
In the dream I am standing on a frozen lake —Candlewood Lake in Danbury, Connecticut— I am ice fishing with my friends and I look at the hole in the ice. I see something that you will never see if you are ice fishing: a fish pointing up its snout out of the hole. I look at it, I reach down and I lift it up by the gill because it was a pickerel or pike and one never tries to lip a fish with very sharp teeth like that. So, I picked it and lift it up. It is a pickerel or pike. Anyone who knows about fish knows that it has a kind of bronze coloring. But in that glorious winter day the sun was shining brightly, the sky could not be bluer, the ice and the snow could not be any whiter, and I am holding up this fish —in the dream— and I see that because of the sun, it looks golden. Then I realize that no, it does not just look golden, it is golden. It is a fish made of gold but it’s alive, a living golden fish. At that moment in the dream, God effectively drops this into my head. I knew this is God saying to me in this dream:
“You wanted to drill through the ice to touch the collective unconscious, the Divinity that God is. I have something else for you. I have ΙΧΘΥΣ for you, Jesus Christ My Son, Your Savior!
Jordan Peterson — How did you know? Why did you make the association between the fish and Christ at that point? Did that happen in the dream?
Eric Metaxas — The realization took place in the dream. I knew within the dream that this is ΙΧΘΥΣ. I had been searching for this thing: to touch water, the Godhead but [God said] …
“I want one-up you with your own symbol system. I want to give you what you are really looking for: My Son, Your Savior, Jesus Christ, a living Being!”
When you think it logically, a fish coming out of the water: what happens when a fish comes out of the water? Well, it dies. The idea that God came from His medium to ours to die here, all of that became clear in my dream. I was in the dream holding the fish. I was flooded with joy because what I believed you could not “know” (that the Bible is true, that Jesus is God) but I realized that, I knew and as I was holding the fish I realized: “I have what I am looking for” that thing I thought it could not be found. This is God giving himself to me. Within the dream I was flooded with joy —until I woke up— and the next day I went and told the story to a friend of mine at work. I said “I had this dream” and he asked: “What do you think it means?” I said the words that would have made me cringe at any previous day, I said: “It means, I’ve accepted Jesus” — I would have never said that, I was made uncomfortable by people who said such things.
I knew that I have jumped the broomstick, that I was in another world, that I have accepted Jesus. That happened around my 25th birthday.
Jordan Peterson — (Smiling) That was a great dream! By the way, that is quite the archetypal blast you got there. That will teach you to fish around in the dark. You never know what you’re gonna catch!
Eric Metaxas — (Wryly) I really feel like I am talking to Jordan Peterson. I was a different person from that day forward. I changed dramatically. [See μετάνοια metanoia]
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Not an interpretation
I am not going to re-interpret Eric’s dream. In fact, I believe his interpretation is quite accurate. God does not pile mysteries in our mind for no reason. If we dream or see something that others do not see, it is our duty to share it with others so they can benefit from our experience and glorify God. The dream of king Nebuchadnezzar as related in the book of Daniel, is one of those dreams. In the end, the king recognized the greatness of the God of Daniel. Hearing that dialog my mind was filled with so many ideas. The first was connected to Genesis 1:6-10. There God divides the “waters below” from the “waters above” and in between those two bodies of water God sets up what it is going to be the realm inhabited by mankind.
A similar division is made for the Garden of Eden that is located in between rivers. Traditionally, the Garden is said to lie between the Tigris and Euphrates:
And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed. And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads. The name of the one is Phison: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath, where gold groweth. And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it. (Genesis 2:8-15)
When the Israelites are led out of Egypt they depart from the land of Goshen which is located presumably between the two main branches of the Nile River. Later Moses —whose name means “lifted from the water”— leads the people of Israel across the Red Sea. After wandering in the wilderness Israel must cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Those two bodies of water are like bookends that encompass the forty years of Israel in the wilderness.
From Noah to the exile by the Rivers of Babylon —Tigris and Euphrates, the same rivers that defined the location of the Garden of Eden— various bodies of water are presented to us as a deep mystery. The intuition by Eric Metaxas is profound. Water seems to surround us. Like the water in our own mother’s womb seems to serve a purpose that we are not completely allowed to know. Christ’s ministry begins this way:
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. (Matthew 13: 1-2)
The image —fraught with meaning— shows Our Lord on the boat where later so many lessons will be presented to us. Not to mention His walk over the waters (but I am getting ahead of myself) and so many other teachings including Jesus choice of the first Prince of the Church: a fisherman whom He names “Rock” or Petros. Another mysterious image there. Peter the Rock sent to cross the sea of history all the way to the other shore: until Christ returns at the end of times. We all know rocks don’t float but we have a confirmation of that meaning in Matthew 14:22-33 when poor Peter’s faith fails momentarily and he begins to sink like a rock. One cannot deny that Christ has a sense of humor but the message comes through loud and clear: if we have faith in Christ anything can be achieved. Rocks can float, illiterate leaders can teach when moved by the Spirit, people that never walked a mile away from from their farms will be able to speak in tongues previously unknown to them. Davids will fell Goliaths even when the Davids are outnumbered and outpowered.
I took God a boatload of a catch to convince St. Peter of Jesus’ divinity. The unusual load of fish triggered Peter’s instant metanoia. In Eric’s case was not even a catch. The fish came up through the hole in the ice and it is a fish made of gold and yet a living fish made of gold. Imagine St. Peter’s surprise when he caught one fish valuable enough to pay the Temple tax for him and for Jesus as well.
When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, ‘Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?’ He said, ‘Yes, he does.’ And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?’ When Peter said, ‘From others’, Jesus said to him, ‘Then the children are free. However, so that we do not give offence to them, go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.’ (Matthew 17:24-27)
Both Peter and Eric were adopted as sons of the living God in similar circumstances. For Eric and for Peter, Jesus was basically stating his kingship by giving them both a lavish royal gift: Himself. All they had to do was to go fishing and the unexpected happened. What a glorious parable!
