Jeremy Taylor

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Jeremy Taylor, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, has worked with dreams for over forty years; he blends the values of spirituality with an active social conscience and a Jungian perspective. Founding member and past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, he has written four books integrating dream symbolism, mythology, and archetypal energy. The latest is: The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap Into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life. His earlier books - The Living Labyrinth: Universal Themes in Myths, Dreams and the Symbolism of Waking Life; Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill; and Dream Work, have been translated into many languages.
Jeremy appears regularly on local, regional, and national radio and TV, and pioneered on-line dream work as host of AOL's innovative dream work show. He has taught in the schools and seminaries of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA for 30 years and teaches at a wide variety of colleges and universities in the Bay Area. In addition he offers workshops all over the world, and works with clients and groups online via SKYPE and Zoom.us.

Jeremy has a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) from the University of Creation Spirituality and an honorary Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD) from Starr King School for the Ministry. In citing his accomplishments, Starr King said:

"You have changed the world by your presence here. Your unparalleled scholarship and teaching call us to make peace with ourselves so that we are capable of authentic engagement with issues of peace and justice in the larger world. The importance of understanding the messages brought to us in our dreams; understanding that we are a part of a great, complex family of human and archetypal beings; these and other gifts flow from your speech and writing. In receiving a gift of deep wisdom we, in response, are called to a higher self to serve a larger good.

“You are an agent of social change, as radical and dedicated to your work as those who stand tall on the pages of our Unitarian Universalist history books. You have walked with us while pointing us in the direction of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Your life embodies the Unitarian Universalist first principle, which calls each of us to embrace the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

“In recognition of your commitment, scholarship, dedication, and passion for making our lives and our world more humane, just, and joyous, we award you the S.T.D. degree."

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Jeremy is also a published poet, has written a prize-winning screenplay, and had his collage art featured in Intimate Agenda: Inside the Creative Process. He lives in Northern California with his wife and two very fine “tuxedo” cats.

Poem by Jeremy Taylor


Love Prayer
(with a tip of the hat to Coleman Barks)

Oh, God(dess)
Grant me Love!

Please, make it simply
Difficult.
Make it crack and melt the hard places
Where I am so sure of myself.

Make it stiffen and enliven the weak places
Where I am uncertain, ignorant,
and secretly afraid.

And please make it horribly "inappropriate"
So I must really know you in myself,
Myself in you,
Forced
To give up everything that is not love
(Because it is so hard to do it willingly. . .)

I pray this
Knowing it will ruin me.

Let me be ruined by love,
So that I may come back to you
Without pride, or stupidity,
- Or pretense, or opinions -

or any sense of separation -

Stripped
Like a lover,
Hungry and ecstatically full
All at the same time!

-Jeremy Taylor, United States
twentieth century
Sacred Poems and Prayers of Love, 1998

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