When two women begin emailing their dreams to each other they find themselves in the strange, rich world of communal dreaming. The dreaming not only forges their spirituality and deepens their friendship but also becomes a gift to their communities. The dreams enter the arenas of church and environmental policy, as well as the lives of individuals, bringing healing, joy, instruction, and luminous connection with the Divine. This story shows how to share dream time with a community and bring that dreaming reality to the awake world. To those who struggle to do good in a difficult world it brings a comforting message: this soulwork is possible.

If this sounds like a book blurb, it is.  The Dream Matrix: A Memoir of Connection, my cheerfully self-published oeuvre, is now out in all forms, available in print and e-versions at Amazon and other major e-catalogues.

This book tells a cool story. Maybe quirky is the word. It is not deliberately quirky, however, like some movies (Amélie and Moonrise Kingdom come to mind). It is all absolutely true but the truth kept quirking out of control as I tried to capture it. And so I don’t want to hype it but say only absolutely true things about it.

I think, for example, that our dreams crossed borders of time and space. The narrator, my very real alter ego, Stranger (what can I say; quirky), points out when that happens but readers must judge. The way the dreams of my friend, Carolyn Raffensperger, and I crossed into each other’s territory at the time of our correspondence was pretty subtle. Others have far more dramatic experiences to tell.

But paranormal experience is not really the point. As I say in the prologue, “This memoir is a case study in tapping into a less conscious, less defined, less logical, less limited, more creative aspect of our individual selves, which embodies and lives our connection with other people, all life, Creation, and the Divine. . . .It is about getting beneath the surface in order to make surface life—individual, communal, social, including at the ‘policy’ level—more authentic and thus more beautiful. It is about connection. It attempts to describe the matrix for, and ecology of, that interweaving.”

I do believe I am a mystic. I certainly have had some mystical experiences and they enrich my faith. But I’m a practical mystic; that is, I believe such experiences must have something to say to everyday life and the workings of the visible world. This memoir is the backstory for how I came to believe that is possible and necessary. It is also is also a backstory—one of many—for some important ideas that are being made real in the world, such as the precautionary principle and guardianship of future generations.

I hope you will read it and let me know what you think.