I hate the expression “sleeping late.” It sounds like you did something wrong. Or, worse yet, that you are speaking of someone posthumously, as in, “Oh yes, that late sleeper. It was really too bad about her, how they found her all tangled in yards of cream colored percale, no iron sheets.”

I much prefer the expression, “sleeping in.” There are days when horizontally occupying your bed an extra hour or two is simply the right thing to do. “Sleeping in” is an expression of occupation in the best possible sense. Giving yourself some extra rest, or as I used to describe it, “putting in overtime at the dream factory,” is the best way you can take care of yourself. Sleep is too often discounted. We have so many things to do. Sleeping in is a rare indulgence. An often ignored necessity.

Six in the morning is a sacred time, a time when I feel like I am standing on a threshold between two worlds. A time of choice. I can either shake myself into wakefulness or release myself into felt reality, a state where my feelings and inner knowing are indisputable. My dreams need no corroboration, no third party vetting. Every story or image that pours through my consciousness is as it is. While some urge to interpret arises, it’s an incredible experience of acceptance. Nothing needs to make sense. Everything can’t help but be felt. For me, during early morning sleep, almost unimaginable images paint themselves across my inner screen, like a quirky foreign movie. I may not know the language, but I never have any doubt that the movie is about me.

Just the other Saturday, I had one of those special mornings. I did not have any errands scheduled, no place where I had to be. I had already resigned myself to do my cleaning chores later in the day. I remember having woken up in the middle of the night and turned over to sleep on my belly (a favorite sleep position my mother seemed to have programmed in me). Then I seemed to have gone unconscious again, for hours, until the subtlest of early morning light began to creep into the room and my deep slumber gave way to its own form of lightness.

I saw myself walking down a narrow dirt street in an old colonial South American city, perhaps Spanish conquistador founded Cali or Cartegena. The sandy colored buildings seemed to match the pinkish, mildly bleached out hue of the street. The blueness of the sky penetrated my eyes and the palms of my hands felt sticky. I think I had just consumed a paleta, one of those all-fruit juice type of popsicles they sell on the streets. I was walking like I was going somewhere, as if I had a destination, although I couldn’t have named it. I heard a long chorus of church bells ringing from who knows where. There must have been a half dozen stucco churches within a few blocks. By the duration of the ringing, I would have guessed it was late morning, maybe ten or eleven o’clock. Just after I turned past an alleyway, the street opened into a square of some sort. Cars were circling a minor monument in the center as if they were in no hurry to get out of their circus ring route. I noticed an old beat up Pontiac, like the car Steve and Laura had when they went to U of I. The car looked like it was seventeen feet long. There were six or more young men in the car, laughing and joking; good-naturedly punching each other in the shoulders, as I guess boys will do. They were wearing Chicago Bears football (futbol) jerseys. How funny, I thought, that Brian Urlacher had fans out here.

Sleeping in, giving yourself space to dream, is no small thing.