There is a time between sleep and waking when dreams seem more vivid and the images planted in your resting brain become etched in profound ways. This is the time when you are not quite asleep and not quite awake, the time when you struggle to remember what day it is and where you are. It must be,in the Celtic tradition,a thin place of sorts, that place where this world and eternity coexist.

I had an experience of this in-between land this morning that I am still gently wrestling with. In the span of time between being unconscious and conscious, I heard this voice in my head:” Pour out your heart.” I tried to come up from the darkened waters of sleep to connect these words with a dream I had been having, tried to attach the voice to some unknown being that played a part,opposite my own, in a nighttime drama. But I could not recollect any story that had been playing out in my sleep. Only the words: “Pour out your heart.” The words seemed so significant that I even repeated them out loud to myself so I would not forget.

And now this message has been following me about all day. Pour out your heart. What could it possibly mean? Pour out on what, to whom? What exactly am I supposed to be pouring from my heart? Compassion? Love? Empathy? I have to admit to feeling a little like the Kevin Costner character in ‘Field of Dreams’ who kept hearing the voice saying ‘build it and they will come’. He proceeded to plow over his Iowa cornfields and build a baseball diamond where dead but heavenly players came to play the game they had loved in life. But ‘pour out your heart’ is a little less concrete than Kevin’s baseball message. There is little direction other than the message itself.

But a good message it is. How could I go wrong pouring out my heart into every action I take? My work. My home. My family. My friendships. All the many things about which I feel passionate.There are also the small seemingly unimportant acts that make up each and every day. Buttering toast. Drinking coffee. Loading the dishwasher. Making the bed. Passing a stranger on the street. Setting the dinner table and eating with intentional gratitude. What about pouring heart into all that?

I have no idea why or how this message came to me. But it has given me much to ponder and consider on what could have been an ordinary Wednesday. But then again, if we pour our hearts into each day, can there even be such a thing as ordinary?

Minnesota writer Robert Bly has translated a poem of Antonio Machado. It ends with the lines:
“Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt- marvelous error!-
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept,
I dreamt-marvelous error!-
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.”

What a gift it was to have an early morning message that has so filled my day. With questions, with longing, with humor and hope and, even, with God.