Episode Details

Jen Oyama Murphy of Paper Crane Coaching  joins Maggie and Danielle to talk about her work with dreams.

Jen is a Story Guide. She has a BA in English from Yale University. She’s worked in ministry and Non-profit settings for 30 years using both theology and psychological modalities. She’s a dream guide, a mom and she most recently worked for the Allender Center in Seattle. Jen has been a guide for Danielle personally in her training in therapy work and story work. Both Maggie and Danielle were in story groups that Jen facilitated through the Allender Center.

Jen is located in Chicago, IL with her husband. They have two adult daughters and so as far as stage of life goes, she’s transitioning out of that mother and moving into what she is calling the Matriarch stage, borrowing from Jungian Psychology and archetypes. She is trying to live and lead from a place more of knowing where I’m empowered and called, rather than when you’re in that mothering stage where it’s a lot of effort and figuring out how to care for yourself while caring so deeply for others. “I think even my identity is starting to locate a little bit differently.”

All three are connected to the Seattle School and Jen mentions that on the Seattle School’s website, they have a quote from Richard Rohr about the inside edge of the outside, or the outside edge of the inside. To Jen that’s a liminal space and she locates herself in that space as an Asian American woman, feeling very much in the in-between and the invisibility of that space. It can be really lonely, with a sense of waiting and transition. For her that plays out for her racially, not being white, not being black and not really knowing how to understand or define herself without a lot of other Asian faces around her. This has been a place that has felt like a place of abandonment and a place where she’s forgotten herself. Because she’s moving into her middle-late 50s, she in a different place where she’s starting to hear Jesus ask her to consider that the liminal space actually is a space of creativity. It’s not just a place of marginalization but out of that hurt when there is healing and transformation and growth, there can be this powerful space of transition, generativity and creativity. This has brought a new richness to her dream world and she’s trying to pay attention to it and bring it into the work she’s doing. 

Maggie asks Jen what is dream work and how does she use it?

Jen thinks of dreams as parables—they are stories that the spirit is co-authoring with our unconscious. Because she is such a cognitive person, living in her head, she believes it is Jesus’ pursuit of her and God’s sweet mercy that she has dreams. Playwright Marsha Norma says “dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.” For Jen this is perfect combination of story work, which is about text, and dreams which are the symbols and pictures that go along with the story. Because she is in her head so much, she misses or doesn’t pay attention to the illustrations. Her dreams are stories with symbols that are inviting her to pay attention to something about herself, something about her world, something about who Jesus is and what the kingdom of God is life. Sometimes, she says, it is something she once knew and had forgotten and needed to be reminded again. Dreams are a powerful way God is communicating to us. Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest John Sanford says, “Dreams are God’s forgotten language” and Jen thinks that is really true.

Danielle has been writing about how are words just are coming out of her and that her dreams give her the texture and feeling. She is able to have a witness and a felt sense in her skin for the texture of the story. A nod back to the liminal space Jen talked about, a blending of past and present, what’s real and what we’re calling dreams or parables.