I am far from home and have been gone for a long time. Soon, however, I will fly back home and be reunited with my family members. That will be a happy time but before then, I must clean up the rooms where I have been living. This task involves gathering together my possessions, packing up the things I wish to save and throwing the others out. I feel anxious about being able to finish this work on time before I must leave.

This first paragraph summarizes the most frequent of the dreams that I experience. Many other dreams (some of them shocking or humorous) come through my psyche at night but something like this one occurs over and over. Being away from home; planning to return; feeling under pressure to get things done before I can leave – – all of these features mark the typical fantasy that visits my unconscious during sleep.

It does not surprise me to experience this kind of dream.  After all, in my waking life, I have often lived away from home, notably during my two years spent in Europe. Even when living in my home state, I did so, for a long time, in monastic seclusion cut off from family members and friends. And not rarely did I have to deal with the pressure of moving from one place to another.

Also, metaphorically, as a longtime baseball player and fan and a current Sunday softball player, I know the allure of heading home. Although my stepping on home plate has become increasingly rare, I still relish feeling my foot touch that starting and finishing place.

A spiritual writer friend, Harry Moody, sees dreams as one of the ways by which we come into contact with our soul. Filled as they are with basic images of  reality, dreams can put us in touch with our deeper selves. “These images,” writes Professor Moody, “convey advice and messages to us while we sleep, appealing to our deeper need for both guidance and transcendence.”

My friend’s view of dreaming stirs in me sympathetic vibrations, and much of it is confirmed by my experience. At various points in my life, dreams have given symbolic expression to events going on in my life and to vital issues with which I was then preoccupied. I have found them valuable for the messages.

I must add one note of caution, however. Though dreams may prove exciting and enhance our fantasy life, it can be dangerous to take them as guides for living. Just because a dream may be gripping does not mean it should be the basis for important decisions.

That noted, my most frequent dream clearly points to something important in my inner life. It suggests a longing for home, a deep restlessness to return to the place where I began.  This dream tells me that “home is where the heart is,” and that is where I want to go.

Being ill at ease with where you are is a situation that always reminds me of St. Augustine’s famous phrase addressed to God: “You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.” In this perspective, nothing can satisfy human longing until the creature is united with the creator.

A verse from the Psalm 42, “As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you O God,” expresses the same desire. And the words I heard sung in Hebrew at a wedding last week: “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (a verse from the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible) suggest not only the longing that the bride and bridegroom feel for one another but the longing that seekers have for God.

The desire for God is itself a spiritual gift that can bring us closer to God. If we find material things ultimately unsatisfying, that is what many spiritual seekers have felt through the ages. Though these created realities  may have their own beauty and powerful attraction, they cannot fill the heart. God alone can offer complete satisfaction, not to say ecstatic completion.

Desire for God can be the foundation stone of one’s spiritual life. It can also serve as the engine and the content of our prayer. “You can go home again,” you can imagine God saying in open-hearted response.

Richard Griffin