Mixed Message Dream

2011/1/30
I awoke today around 8:30am from a very vivid dream.

I was in a church parking lot in my car. I was very tired and distressed and unsure what to do. I had a small child with me. I had the sense of having been there at other times. No one was around. The parking lot empty except for me.

The police were called to ask me to leave because I was trespassing. "But there is no one here. Who called you?" I asked. I got no answer.

~dream fast-forwards~

I am in the same church parking lot in my car. I am again very tired and distressed and unsure what to do. I have a small child with me.

There is a spigot on the side of the building and I am very thirsty and hot. I go to the spigot to get some water. Inside, I glimpse a few people making Sunday preparations. There are a few women, and a powerful looking man in an expensive black suit and stately black hat who I know most certainly is the preacher.

I go back o my car.

Again a police officer shows up and asks me to leave because I am trespassing. "Who called you?" I asked. "Someone inside" he replies.

~dream fast-forwards~

I am about to turn into the same church parking lot. Again, I am very tired and distressed and unsure what to do. I have a small child with me.

An expensive black car cuts me off. The man I recognized earlier as a preacher rolls down his window and asks me to "Move on. We don't want your kind here."

I look stunned at him and call him a "racist, Christian, bigot".

I awake. I don't think I should go back to sleep so I'll just stay up. Lots of messages in that dream!

      Dreams are funny things. They last but a few fleeting seconds but seem to bring about so much information in those seconds.

I don't remember a lot of my dreams though I try very had to; it's the well from which I draw my best artwork from. Parts of my dreams linger with me through an entire day sometimes.

      I'm not sure why I was able to have such recall on this one.

****

2011/1/30 @ 1:45 PM 

So I lay down and took a nap and just woke. My Dream:

I was spending the day shopping with my grown daughters. We were having what we call "Momby/daughter quality time day". We put our things into the car and readied to continue our day. Before we could leave I needed to find somewhere to clean my hands for they were dirty. I thought I would go into this funeral home that was around the corner from where I was. When I got there I found a very long line of people waiting to get in the door.  Obviously it was receiving time for a family of someone who had just passed.

I stood there unsure of what I should do since I did not know the person being honored in death, and I only need to clean my hands. Suddenly the door opened at a small ramshackled building to my left. An older black man came out in a rumpled white suite and asked if I needed help. I told him my hands were dirty and that I needed somewhere to clean them. He invited me in. I cleaned up and refreshed myself. He offered to show me around. He was a minister and he was trying to make much needed improvements on the place that was both his home and church to his congregation. He did not live or preach in grand surroundings.

We sat on a small balcony overlooking his outdoor Sunday meeting area and watched a small building in the process of being erected. It would be the new, but still understated church, yet it had much glass and transparency to the outside world.

Though he did not know me he offered me drink and we sat and had refreshing conversation. I told him I had left my girls waiting on me and needed to get back. As I rose to leave I took my empty glass back inside. I noticed there was a very elderly, bedridden man in a bed placed in the corner. I inquired of him. The gentleman told me, "He is my father. He too was minister here. He is now too old and feeble to leave his bed. His mind is not clear and his body is weak, yet he continues to hang on in this world." We discussed briefly why it seemed some people, despite their age or health remain here when it seems God could or should have called them home already. Of course we had no answers. We are not to know the answers to everything we question.

I thanked the son for his generosity to me, told him I had enjoyed our conversation. I stood to go; I looked back at the elder man in the bed. "Life is such a fleeting thing, yet at the same time it can seemingly linger too long."