On Dreams

My subconscious mind is much more talented than I am. It's a writer, creator, poet and musician in ways that I can only dream (no pun intended) of achieving in the waking world. I once wrote a 12 page short story almost entirely while asleep, surprising myself with its completion when I woke up in the morning with my head on the keyboard. Often, entire songs will come in my dreams, as if I'm hearing them performed or on the radio. Sometimes, this works to my advantage, as when I wake up, I am able to remember snippets of what I dreamed and write them down. Other times, it's maddening as I feel the very last shred of whatever it was slip away, back down into the depths of my brain, often to never resurface again. This morning was one of the latter. In my dream, I was just able to realize I was dreaming at the very last moment of hearing this song, and I woke up and grabbed my journal and hunted for a pen. But as I'm writing it down, the words start to fade from the page, and page I'm writing on turns to coal. I remember etching the last two lines I wrote into the coal with the tip of my pen. Crap. I'm still dreaming. I jerk myself awake, focusing hard on remembering the words so they don't fade away forever. Despite the fact that I'd just heard an entire song, and it was quite good, all I could grasp in the fading moments were 2 lines of the chorus, the two lines I etched in coal — "I will trust in you, in everything I do. I will trust in you my God." I think. I'm not quite sure. I can still hear the singers voice. The song was so complete that when I got up, I had to Google it to make sure it wasn't just something I heard on the radio once. I can even tell you that I think it was sung by BarlowGirl.

My brain is absolutely the most frustrating thing. It really drives me crazy sometimes, the tricks it pulls.

-Adam

More strangeness in the dreams department

I woke up this morning to an exceptionally odd dream. In it, I was getting ready for work. That's not really too unusual. I've had those kind of dreams before, and usually they just serve to annoy me to no end when I wake up and realize that I haven't actually just brushed my teeth and showered and all those other things, and now I have to do them again. So as I'm getting ready, I'm in the kitchen and I see unfamiliar movement out the window through the mostly-closed blinds. I go for a better look and see an absolutely huge mountain lion in our front yard. I yell to Lori to look out the window RIGHT NOW and run to her. She is continuing down the steps towards the living room and I say again "No! LOOK OUT THE WINDOW!" and grab her by the hand and drag her up to the landing on the stairs, which overlooks the street in front of our house. Then I finally get a good look at the thing, and can see it better. It's enormous. Up to my chest at least... kinda saber-toothed tiger huge. But it looks really thin and mangy like it hasn't eaten in quite a while. It's fur is tan and matted, and at just the right angle it looks like it has very faint spots on its back. So we're watching as this mountain lion stalks a deer across the street, which has it's back to us. And in this explosion of power the lion runs across the street and sinks its teeth into the back end of the deer and takes it down. The deer didn't get more than a jump in before it was down. At that point I notice two things. First is there is another deer over by the poolhouse that the lion had already gotten. It was alive, but bitten in the spine and paralyzed so it couldn't get away. The second is there is a white van from some sort of service company parked in the street. The (very very stupid) guys from the company noticed the commotion and came out to get a closer look. One was on the far side of the van, just feet away from where the lion was, another was at the front of the van, and two were farther back, on our side of the street yelling at the other guys to get away from it. Then, the guy who was closest to the lion got too close, and it jumped him.

Have you ever had a moment in a dream where it resets to a certain point because you made the wrong decision? At that point in the dream, as soon as the lion jumped, I bolted downstairs and into the garage and grabbed my machete. But as I turn, and I'm trying to decide if it would be faster to open the garage door or run back through the house and out the front door, I realize I've been too slow, and suddenly I'm back on the stairs with Lori, but bolting upstairs where I grab a gun out of the safe. I run back down the stairs, jump from the landing down to the entryway and out the door and across the street still in my socks, gun in hand. The guy who was bitten is on the ground with the lion on top of him trying to fight it off, and the other guys are trying to drag him away by his other arm. I tell him to hold it as still as he can and I put a 9mm hollow-point through its brain. The lion goes limp, and I can hear someone in the background calling 911.

This is the point where I fully woke up. I'm not sure what the dream means, if anything, but I'm pretty sure it has less significance than Lori's dream, which she described as flying to Europe to spoon feed some sort of prince and princess. At least the connotations of her dream are pretty obvious.

On submission to authority

I had a dream. (Not "I have a dream," but rather literally, I was sleeping, and had a dream.) In this dream I was elected president of the United States. Some people would take this as a sign that I secretly desire to rule the world, or tell people what to do. Others would see it as a sign that my path is chosen, and one day it will happen. I think that's pretty stupid.

So in this dream, I am suddenly thrust into the limelight. I don't want to be president, but I ran on the platform that in general, the American political process as it is today sucks. I ran on a platform of reducing the national debt, even though it means cutting funding to worthy programs. In this dream, I remember standing in front of Congress, and asking them, "Why am I here? Am I here because I want to be? Am I here because I desire power? No. I'm here because the American people hate the way you do business. They're sick of laws being passed with addenda that have nothing to do with what the law is for. They're sick of people deciding for them what's in their best interest, based on who yells the loudest or who has the deepest pockets. They are sick, in short, of you. Therefore, I will veto any bill that does not focus solely on one issue." And I did. It took them a while to figure out how to write laws that couldn't be understood without an advanced degree in cross referencing, but eventually there were laws passed that did one thing and one thing only.

I remember touring the White House, having all these busy little bees (not literally bees, but just people who buzz all over - I felt I had to clarify since this was a dream, and talking bees usually aren't out of the question in dreams) showing me all the different rooms, and while this is happening all I'm thinking about is how huge it is and how hard it will be to get used to living in a place so big. And as we are passing through staff quarters, I find rooms more my size, and end up actually trading bedrooms with a staff member, for the express purpose of staying humble. Living directly among the people who are being paid to serve me and making sure that I don't get comfortable having whatever I want whenever I want.

I also remember having to stand up for my beliefs. Coming under fire because of things said by my pastors. Many sermons from my church are available for free download as mp3s. There's even a podcast subscription you can get in iTunes now. And in this dream, there are people who want nothing more than to tear me down and discredit everything I say. And that's really easy to do if you take snippets of what I listen to week after week out of their proper context. It doesn't take me being president for people to take Mark's words and twist them to make it seem as though he is a hateful, bigoted man. It already happens. There have been websites devoted to slandering him – to saying he preaches hate, and it's all a lie. You can't take a small chunk of a sermon to know what the man stands for. Honestly, even a whole sermon isn't enough. But after many years, I know the character of this man, and he is a loving, deeply compassionate, extremely zealous but often incendiary man. And in this dream I had to answer to that. And my answer there was the same as it is here. I deeply love and respect Mark. Not because he's my pastor and I feel this loyalty to him, though I do, but because after observing his life... his attitudes... his habits, I know him to be a man who seeks God's will. I know him as a man who speaks the truth, even though it often makes him unpopular. He's not always right. I don't always fully agree with what he says. But I do know this - he speaks with the wisdom that comes from decades of passionately seeking God.

What really struck me though, was that throughout this dream, I was doing the same. I wasn't using my position of authority as authority to do whatever I wanted, but rather I sought out what was good. I chose to do what was best for the people I served – the American people. And what was best didn't make them, or me, happy. I sought the council of aides and staff and advisors, but also in everything, I sought God's council. I would stop meetings with generals and world leaders to pray. I would call Mark on the phone for a brutally honest assessment of "how am I doing?" I listened to people's concerns and addressed them.

Throughout this dream, I am in a position of what in many cases is absolute authority, but I never saw it as that. I never behaved as if it was. In one part of this dream, I was sitting in on the Great Commission pastor's conference, and one of my secret service guys was going to turn up the heat to make me more comfortable (Mark is well known for keeping it cold to keep people awake and alert) and I told him that if he touched the thermostat without Mark's say so I'd have his hide. And that moment was a beautiful summary of the entire dream. Can you imagine the leader of the free world, sitting in a room with dozens of ordinary men - men any one of us could approach with confidence - and submitting himself to them? Can you imagine the reaction from the people if the man who leads them openly, publicly, in everything, allowed himself to be led by not just other men, but God?

I've been sick with some stomach stuff recently, and on Friday I wasn't feeling well enough to go to work or church. So as I'm sitting at home all day, doing the normal things people do when they're sick - laying around, drinking Gatorade, watching TV shows, taking naps - and as I'm alone Friday night and Lori is at church it struck me that in my entire day I'd been so into doing what was out of the ordinary for me that I hadn't stopped all day to spend time with God. He gave me an entire day off from doing what I have to do, to do what I want to do, and I didn't once stop to thank him, or even think about him. Of course, once I realized that I immediately put down what I was doing and spent the couple hours until Lori got home reading and praying. While I was reading I came across the story in Matthew 8 of an encounter between Jesus and a Centurion. A Centurion was a Roman soldier. A commander in the army of a nation that had no respect for Jews, their laws, customs or beliefs. And here he comes to a Jewish man, who at this time is mainly known as a healer, a wise man, and often a public nuisance. And he says "Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering." to which Jesus said "I will go and heal him." This was not an unusual request, nor was it an unusual response. Up to this point Jesus had been going from town to town preaching and healing people with all kinds of disease. But the Centurion's reply is what struck me, and has stuck in my mind. He said "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." Jesus was astonished at this man's faith, and used him as an example for our time as well as theirs. That though this man was not a Jew, not one of God's chosen people, his faith in Jesus and who he was put him "at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." Whereas many Jews, who were called by God, will be thrown into the darkness for their lack of faith. And of course, Jesus healed the man's servant without ever going to his house.

Here's the weird thing though. In my dream, it was so easy for me to be sitting in a room with military men, deciding if we should go to war, to stop and pray for wisdom for the situation. To be meeting with world leaders to decide the fate of the planet and pray for guidance. But how often do we... scratch that, do I not seek guidance for a tough situation at work? Or to seek wisdom in dealing with relationships? Why is it that when we are making big, life changing decisions we can throw up a "God, let me know what to do", but not when we're deciding whether or not we should really buy that, or say these words to someone, or whatever the situation? Yeah, God gave us the ability to reason and make decisions and we should trust in that, but only after we've learned to trust in his wisdom. You can trust in your ability to make decisions all day long, but if you don't have the wisdom to use it properly, you are going to make bad decisions all day long. Philippians 4:6 says "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." 2 Chronicles 31:21 "In everything that he undertook in the service of God's temple and in obedience to the law and the commands, he sought his God and worked wholeheartedly. And so he prospered." The key words here are "in everything". How much of my "everything" am I hanging on to?

Just... random

Yesterday morning I had the most asinine dream I can remember. In it, Lori and I were watching TV and my grandma's house and saw a commercial for what was supposed to be "the best episode of Star Trek EVER" so after fiddling with the VCR at the appropriate time to get it to work, because even though the VCR was on the right channel, the TV was on channel 43 and there was no remote, so it took forever to get down to channel 3 (really, who has problems with the VCR in their dream?). Anyway, we tune in, and I immediately notice that this particular episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes, who is responsible for such Star Trek wonders as Gilbert & Sullivan duets and invisible chase scenes (and that's just the first 15 minutes of ONE movie). Anyway, in the episode, Wesley Crusher and some other person (possibly Mordock) are on their way back to the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft when it is hijacked by a race of uber-nerds called Rick Astley (YouTube Link - I had no idea who he was and had to look him up, strange what your subconscious knows that you don't). They hijacked the shuttle because they'd somehow found out that years earlier, Wesley had had a run in with William Shatner (not Captain Kirk, but actually Shatner) who is apparently like a God to geeks all over the universe. At this run in, one of Shatner's hair follicles had fallen on Wesley and over those years, Shatner's DNA had become contained within Wesley's own, and Rick Astley wanted Shatner's DNA to integrate into their own. I should point out at this point that Rick Astley was a weird, gnarled looking collective race. Their ships and all their people had the same DNA, and when one was 'updated', they all were. They also looked like they were made out of green, red and yellow play dough. Anyway, they extract the Shatner DNA and one of them takes it out of the lab and scratches his arm with his big, yellow, pointy fingernail and shoves the hair follicle into his bloodstream. (More of just a shove into the play dough than anything.) At that point, something goes horribly, horribly wrong, and they all start to turn a dark purple (perhaps the Shatner was too much to handle?)
At that point, it cuts to the Enterprise where Data finds out the shuttlecraft has been hijacked, and goes to tell Picard. Data has to plead with Picard 3 times to go rescue Wesley, because Picard is on his way to the Emerald City Comic Con and doesn't want to be bothered.
That was when, in the dream, I said "this is the most patently ridiculous thing I've ever seen." There were a few more things that happened, including a deadpan stare-straight-at-the-camera-for-5-seconds moment out of Picard, but at that point I was waking up and things got a little fuzzy.