David Striar found a way to combine art and faith. (By Michael Williamson – The Washington Post)

By David Striar
Saturday, December 5, 1998; Page B09

Years ago, I found myself struggling with the question of what to do with my life.

I was drawn to the arts, especially to music and writing. But I also felt the need to do work that would fulfill my intellectual appetite and provide a more direct means of serving the community and making a contribution.

I didn't believe in God, approve of religion or truly accept the fact that I was a Jew. Then one night, I had a dream in which I found myself sitting at one end of a small boat in the middle of a mountain lake. Surrounding the lake on every side, with no buffer of land in between, were the walls of the mountain.

A somewhat portly old man wearing a white yarmulke and a long white gown stood peacefully at the other end of the boat, gazing down at me with a gentle, fatherly smile. "David," he said, "by choosing to become an artist, you are running away from your highest potential."

"But what could be more beautiful than the singing of a bird?" I insisted.

"Love is more beautiful," said the figure in white.

"But I have love, and my love is for beauty," I said.

We continued with this debate for some time, and in my heart of hearts I suspected the old man was right. Therefore, although I felt uncomfortable at the idea of not returning home to practice my scales, when he asked me to accompany him on a special journey, I accepted.

Striar's illustration of his "journey"

This dream affected me in a profound manner. At a point in my life where I felt scornful of religion, dismissive of my Jewishness and alienated from God, it gave me an image of myself engaged in a dialogue with an obviously supernatural, otherworldly figure. It supplied me with a missing piece of self-knowledge, the reality of a spiritual life I was not even aware of, a life that because of unresolved personal issues and social conditioning, my conscious, Western-educated mind would not abide or allow.

The voice of the dream instructed, "You can't know what you want until you know who you are."

The door had been opened to an alternative that, up until then, I could not imagine: the possibility that the one way I could truly unite the aesthetic, the intellectual and the moral parts of myself was by following some sort of spiritual vocation rather than a purely artistic one.

What exactly this work would be was not immediately clear, however, for I did not feel inspired to follow the conventional path toward religious leadership. I was certain of one thing only: that I would be guided henceforth by the voice of the dream, which became – and continues to be – my rabbi, my teacher, my physician and my muse, providing the insights and the support I need for my spiritual development.

This, I now know, was the "special journey" referred to by the man in white. Some people are guided in life by the practice of meditation or yoga. Many find the spiritual sustenance they need from prayer, the wisdom they seek from scripture. For me, all of these things are to be found in the dream. The dream is my anchor, my cornerstone, my rock. It is the spiritual center from which I shape my existence, the clarifying lens through which I understand my experience.

In any case, I didn't stop "practicing my scales," writing poetry, singing, composing or painting. I did, however, begin to devote my artistic and intellectual skills to the work of communicating my experience of God, including His or Her desire for a world in which love holds more sway. I do this by offering my dream-inspired art and philosophy in classes, workshops and performances. It is through playing the role of the spiritual witness that I believe I can fulfill what the man in white calls my "highest potential."

David Striar, 42, lives in Washington. He has written and illustrated a book of dream-inspired poetry and is forming a Jewish Renewal group that combines religious tradition and creativity with a desire for social justice.