Here’s the third dream of the set–no real point to it, but it has an interesting feature to it.

So, I dreamed that on some patriotic  holiday we stopped at some kind of expansive roadside rest stop or roadside attraction.  It had a swimming feature so we splashed around for a bit and then we decided to go to the bathroom before we left.  this was a big place, so they had several small bathroom buildings all together, laid out roughly in the over all shape of the US, and each bathroom building was labeled by a region.  There was a small access road to the left running diagonally up and away, and across it there was another small building that represented the Northwest broadly speaking, and there was a little sign saying something about the geographic center of the United States being represented by this building.*  We were feeling patriotic so we decided to go there for our bathroom break, though my son kept saying ‘it’s a small lake, it’s some kind of small lake.’  There was a little group of us waiting to go in until the current group had cleared the building, which I thought was odd for a bathroom. (more…)

Frustration–with yourself. There is a lesson you need to learn, a repentance that needs to occur, and you just don’t. The wabbling finger keeps wandering back to the fire.

That which I would do, I do not.

Frustration–there is a thing that needs doing and you just can’t do it. Others can–but you can’t. Whatever that magic spark of skill is, you don’t have it. And so it goes undone.

I dreamed that someone had  lovingly taken her child or grandchild’s drawing of monsters and made them into patchwork stuffed animals.  They were adorable.  Here’s one of them: bright red polkadot angular bizarre body, lumpish semi triangular sky blue head, odd sized eyes, big arms sticking out at odd angles with their own little cloth coverings.  They were all like that.  I loved everything about them.  They were cute.  The kid loved them too.

I was left wondering whether our very real fears are like a kid’s fears of monsters under the bed–can it really be that fear of death, of cancer, of betrayal, attack, injury, poverty, that all these are nothing more than figments?  I can’t believe that, but to the kid the boogey man in the closet is also real and terrifying.

Or are these terrors real enough in their way, though expressed through the childish mind of a real mortal, but someday we will find them transformed into something bright because they are cherished by a divine parent for our sake?

Frustration–the people around you just won’t reach for greatness. They are stiff-necked. They persist in their follies and will not repent.

I am increasingly unhappy with all the talk of how God loves everybody. He does love everybody, let’s be clear about that. But we make it sound like he’s some sort of do-gooder who loves the undifferentiated human mass.

The reality is that He loves each particular–you–in a particular way. He loves you the way only you can be loved, to the maximum extent and beyond that you specifically can be loved. You should not come to God’s love via syllogism–“God loves mankind. I am a man. Therefore….” Too many of us are trying to lawyer God–“you have to love me because its a rule!”

It should be the other way around. You should come to understand and know his love for others by swimming in the current of his love for you. Or you should come to know his love for you by learning from people you know the depths and emotion of his love for them. Out with abstractions.

The glory of an infinite God is the vast particularity he brings to each particular.

I was grumbling in my heart that I haven’t dreamed for months.  Now I have three.  Here’s one:

We are standing near the edge of the world watching a naked man. We are probably all naked too, dunno, but we are, like him, all very innocent. This land is Eden or something like it. The man is standing at the edge. It is a high and grassy where we are, then there is the edge which is a cliff. Far, far below you can just barely make out through the haze and the clouds that there might be some other land below.

The man is Adam, our first father, but also somehow all of us. He is mankind. Call him Adam They as the scriptures sometimes do.
He is trying to see if there is a way down. There is nothing here but the grass and the trees and the cliff.

But there is no way down.

Finally he just plunges.  He just jumps.

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You want some recognition.  A little bit.  Something.  Some kind of validation.  Other people rock the classroom, the sports field, have interesting hobbies, have money or looks, or just have a certain je ne sais quois.  You just plod along.  When you try those things, you don’t actually humiliate yourself, not too badly–but people shrug and look elsewhere.  “Oh, I didn’t realize you were on the team also.  That’s nice.  Congratulations to you too.”

“He’s OK.”

“She’s  all right.”

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

You stick out.  You don’t want to.   You try to fit in.  But something happened to mark you and now, no matter what you do, people notice and talk about you.  Even when things are going well, you feel them watching, judging, waiting.

You cannot feel your lungs ever, except now.  They are tight, painful, itching.   They burn.  You fight each breath.

Gone.  Missing.  Absent.  Never in this life to hear that voice.

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

No one knows you or cares about you.  maybe they would help you if you begged–but they would help you as strangers, or with their teeth gritted.

We hid as it were our faces from him

It’s a part of your body you don’t normally notice.  Now you do.  It’s not acute but it just nags at you.  You can’t take anything for granted.

You want… friendship, love, to be one of the guys, an opportunity to prove yourself.  And you don’t get it.  No.  Not with us, they say.

Maybe its you, you don’t know.

He was despised and rejected of men.

There you are, moving along like you have so many times before… ouch!  Dang dang dang!   You’ve stubbed your toe.

Which actually tells us a lot about the mortal condition.

Kings shall see that which they have not considered

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