Dark Parable: Cry for hire

In February 2009,

I dreamed a minister had decided to have an affair. It was a favorite minister of mine and in the dream I might have been his wife. I didn't want to come out and rebuke him and I remembered a book written by a famous writer from the past who talked about the dangers of affairs and how they can destroy a ministry. So
I decided to look for this book. I remembered I had put it in a bookcase near a dumb waiter. But the house had so many bookshelves, crawl spaces, and dumbwaiters that I couldn't quite find which one. The book was called "a cry for hire." I looked everywhere for it. While lookign for it I came upon a world behind the dumbwaiters where people had created a world behind the pulleys. They still used the pulleys but never came out outside into the larger house. I think they were aware of the larger world but didn't really care about it. They even  had raised children there and had different generations. One child had bad scars or blemishes on his legs and I said to him, "you must go out into the sun." I never found the book but when I woke up I went online and googled "a cry for hire." I got nothing. There was no such title. But when I googled "cry for hire" I got this:

True friends appear less mov'd than counterfeit; As men that grieve at funerals are not so loud as those that cry for hire. ~ Horace

I had never heard of the book/ode before and suddenly here is the phrase! It reminded me of the time in college when I dreamed of Sonnet 8 and figured I'd read it when I woke up. When I did read the sonnet, it totally spoke to my situation. Am not sure what counterfeit friends I may have or -- vice versa-- which folks I think don't love me but which really do. But it really blessed me. I like stuff like this because it makes me know that stuff in dreams are not entirely about thoughts or events the dreamer is aware of but that God does wonderful things to show us the way.

I decided at that time to write a children's story about the pulley world. A nice metaphor for we
Earthers and how we've forgotten where we came from. It turned out not to be an adult story. So that dream helped me in three ways.

1) I was being told to go out into the sun more to help my sleeping issues (okay, i still need to do that more)
2) I was given a world to describe and explore.
3) I was told how to deal with fame and with criticism.

THIS IS THE HORACE POEM IN ITS ENTIRETY. IT'S ABOUT NOT TRUSTING FOLKS WHO
PRAISE YOUR WORK. TRUST THOSE WHO TRY TO IMPROVE IT. ("f" replaces the "s" in
many of the words. Olde Englifhe.)

HORACE. ioi


Take leave of Woe, and the soft Joys of Love:
And no Musician dares pretend to Skill,
Without a great Expence of Time and Pains-,

But ev'ry little busy Scribbler now
Swells with the Praises which he gives himself ;
And taking Sanauary in the Crowd,
Brags of his Impudence, and looms to mend.

A Wealthy Poet takes more Pains to hire
A Flatt'ring Audience, than poor Tradesmen
To persuade Customers to buy their Goods:

'Tis hard to find a Man of great Estate,
That can distinguish Flatterers from Friends.
Never delude your self, nor read your Book
Before a brib'd and fawning Auditor.;
For he'll commend, and feign an Ecstasy,
Grow pale or weep, do any thing to please;
True Friends appear less mov'd than Counterfeit
As Men that truly grieve at Funerals,
Are not so loud as those that cry for Hire.

Wise were the Kings, who never chose a Friend,
'Till with full Cups they had unmask'd his Soul,
And seen the Bottom of his deepest Thoughts.

You cannot arm your self with too much Care
Against the Smiles of a designing Knave.

Umtillius (if his Advice were ask'd)
Would freely tell you what you should correct,
Or (if you could not) bid you blot it out,
And with more Care supply the Vacancy ;
But if he found you fond and obstinate
(And apter to defend, than mend your Faults)
With Silence leave you to admire your self,
And without Rival hug your darling Book :

Dark Parable: waking and waking and waking

I dreamed I was sleeping and there were East Indian demons trying to get at me. I struggled to get out of the dream and thought I woke up. But I woke inside another dream. Tried to get out of that one and realized there were layers of dreams and had to get out and be truly awake. Then the Lord showed me His light shining through and that where His light was the dreaming would stop. I realized that if I thought and spoke God's word about light that God's light would push the false dreaming that the east indian gods had put on me.

I realized that I should pray that God's light would pierce the darkness and to speak verses about God's light so my brain and my family's brain wouldn't be affected by the demons and so we could dream the dreams God wanted to give us.

I didn't know if it was something in my house that had opened the house to east indian gods. This is the third dream I've had about east indians and Christianity.

I woke up and fell asleep and dreamed again. This time I was cooking in an oven and messed up the oven so that it could only give me two channels. It wasn't my oven so I told the man I'd pay for the damage. There was also something about a school trip/experiment. When I woke up, I said to my husband, "How is like an oven like a TV set with channels?"

Then I realized the dream was talking about what we digest. God's been really hammering away at me about not returning to watching TV because a lie of some kind will soon be on TV -- whether church channels or the world-- and it would fool even the very elect.

We have to keep in the light so we don't fall asleep and think we're awake. Am also wondering if there's anything in the house I should get rid of.

Possible interpretation:
To me East Indians and Hinduism represents syncretism. There is something good about wholeness and holistic stuff... and yet I don't know...maybe that's what God is talking about ...that we have to be so careful about that wrong kind of syncretism. Interesting how the gospel of Thomas and the Indian type of Christianity has that weird gnostic thing. And the weird kundalini anointings that have been popping up in churches. Very Todd Bentleyesque. Whatever it is, I'm being very careful. I used to think that I have such discernment I wouldn't be deceived. But Jesus said, "if it were possible the deception would fool even the very elect." Not sure if I'm elect or not, although I'm sure I'm going to heaven (at this point in my life, anyway) and I DO NOT wish to risk being deceived. You can't really prepare yourself not to be deceived. We have to pray that God's light and word awaken us. So many times we think we're awake. We say, "okay, I'm saved now." Then we learn a little more and say, "okay, I'm saved now." Then we (learn) wake a little more and say, "okay, I'm not as asleep as I once was." But more and more I'm seeing the depths of my own darkness and the church's darkness and how easily one can think one is awake when one is really asleep. So am definitely being very careful and discerning in what the TV -- secular or christian-- sends my way. Watching what gets put into my oven.

-C

Updates --Creative and Personal

Aaargh! I'm beginning to think no work of art is safe.

There I was, beginning a new novel. Young Adult. I figured I'd write it and clear my head of Constant Tower so I could go back and edit Constant Tower with the cold dispassionate eye of an artist. Well, noooo! This YA, My Life as an Onion, is bringing back all kinds of painful memories about my bullied school years. I'm actually crying while I write some of those stupid chapters. Well, there I am. I figure I can't go back now. Just get the thing down and move on. I want to enter it in the annual Delacorte YA contest so yeah, I have to finish it.

On the religious front, I've been thinking about building one's house on the rock. Jesus said, in MATTHEW 7:24-27 Wise man built on Rock.Foolish man built on the sand.The storm blew the sand house away!

This is one of the verses that talks about walking the walk instead of merely talking the talk, and instead of deceiving one's self about one's walk. I got to thinking, "Okay, I think God says his word is like medicine and health to all or flesh if we meditate in them. But really, have I been taking his word as medicine?" Hubby and I command son's body to be healed in the morning. We read the word to him but we really do not take the word as we would medicine the world gives us. So we're attempting to do that. Three times a day. Very hard to do! But why is it very hard to commit to? Because probably somewhere in our hearts we're undisciplined and uncommitted to taking medicine in a prescribed way -- I totally, totally CANNOT follow a recipe-- and also because somewhere else in our hearts we really aren't believing the medicine will work. But we are told to obey a verse. And it's only when we obey that we see the truth of the holy insight. Wisdom is justified by what it produces-- only when one produces it.

Same thing goes with the verse, "With the heart one believes that Jesus saves and with the mouth one confesses UNTO salvation." And all those other verses about ordering one's conversation aright. Some folks believe in their heart and never speak the affirming positive confessions, and some folks speak the affirming confessions like robots mimicking words but don't really believe in their hearts. We're told that we walk by faith in God's word not by faith in what we see, feel, hear, etc. So I've been getting better at speaking the spiritual theological truth instead of the pathological truth. I've had moments when I slipped and if someone says, "How are you?" then I said, "I feel like crap, I haven't slept in three weeks, the chest pain is getting worse and my heart is hurting me, Older son is sick, yadda-yadda, yadda." But now I've gotten better at that. Which means if I disappear from the internet for a while it's probably because I'm ill but from now on you won't hear that out of me. And it also means I'll be getting better and better because I'm doing what God wants me to do.

Third thing, I had this dream

I dreamed I was in the frozen north and a sudden cold and snow had separated us from everyone else. One girl found a kind of All-terrain vehicle and she decided she would hug the lake or ocean whatever that was and travel around the marshes and cliffs to the inhabited town miles and miles away. I shouted to her to watch out for sinkholes, hidden lakes, ponds, etc. She said she would but I began to think she had developed a kind of snow sickness because she was driving a bit too erratically and seemed to be enjoying it and laughing a bit much. She even attempted going up a cliff in it. It kinda succeeded but then it fell over backward on its top. She survived, though. I was watching her but then she and I met other folks. We were all happy to do that.

At first there were about three different people traveling alone but then we all met up and at last ended up in a little hut. There was a radio which ran on its own generator, and a stove which was connected to the pipeline but there was very little in the fridge and the question was should we attempt to move on or all stay put and how long would the snow and cold separate us from help or the mainland? Were rescuers even looking for us? I think there were about five women and two men. I remember an older black guy and a youngish white boy. I was far from in shape. I saw that two of the women with us had gone out into the snow from far and had each cleared a bit of the road. It was now my turn. Or it'd be coming up soon. One girl called it the ostrich neck of the road, or that the road ostriched-neck. I kept thinking of how cold I got when I was in the snow, my toes froze easily. My chest ached whenever I tried to lift snow. And I didn't have any pants, just short sheer underwear/upper leg warmers and a black polyester skirt. One of the ladies was challenging another of the ladies about me. She said, "You don't think she can do it but just look. She'll cut such a path in the snow and do so much work you'll be shamed because you won't do that much." The more she spoke of how good I'd do, the more nervous I became because I didn't believe I could lift the shovel more than twice, much less push the snow up the steppelike hillside which was going to be my bit of shoveling, harder than the flat path ...or the part of the road beyond the ostrich neck. 

All the while I kept thinking, why don't we just stay here and attempt to eat off this land and fish in the ice? There's got to be food around and leaving the hut might only get us all killed if we attempt to go all those miles in this snow? Don't survivors die when they leave their place of safety and attempt to go sixty or whatever miles in frozen wasteland to the nearest inhabited town or outpost? But all the while I kept looking around for shoes and something to keep me warm while I went out to shovel.

So then I got to thinking: (First on the physical stuff, although I felt the dream was primarily about spiritual exercizing.) I really must get an exercise bike. I need to lose weight and I so hate winter that I never really walk outside in the snow. And then I thought about the spiritual thing -- that the dream was talking about me wondering if I was up to life spirituality -- Had I been doing my spiritual exercises? Praying for the sick? Praying for others? Meditating on the work? Forgiving creepy cruel people on an ongoing basis?

I really think something creepy is up the bend -- not for me alone but for the world at large-- and am I spiritually prepared to do my part in clearing the path? So, yeah...am attempting that. That's about all. -C

Dark Parable: alligator snake battle

Was up all night then around mid-morning i fell asleep for about a minute and dreamed the following:

Dreamed I was crossing the street (appeared to be across from some big place where a political media event was taking place.)A woman was beside me. Maybe she had been at the media event also. In front of us was a house built on a slightly elevated hill, above the sidewalk. A female friend of mine lived there. She was on top of her roof. When I saw her I thought she'd make good friends with the woman beside me. But my friend on the roof was busy and had her mind on other things. She had two friends with her. They stood on the grass in front of her house looking up at her. There was a snake/viper who was living in a pit of her house. Seems the pit went from the roof all the way through the house to the basement. Luckily my friend had gotten an alligator/crocodile as a pet. The next thing I knew she was holding the alligator. The alligator was heavy and quite large. Her plan was to drop the alligator through the top of the pit on the roof to make it battle with and kill/eat the pit viper. She held the alligator over the pit with its stomach on the top turned toward her, its head over the pit. I kept thinking she should at least turn it around and hold it with its stomach toward the ground so it could land in the pit on its stomach. But she was very afraid the viper would win and kill the alligator instead of the other way around. She didn't want her alligator hurt. As they stood there wondering if they should risk the alligator's life, the snake leaped up from the pit into the alligator's upside down mouth. It was all very messy and confusing and we couldn't tell if the alligator was chocking on the snake or if the snake would be swallowed and bitten or if the alligator would die from a live snake thrashing about in it. The girls got worried for the alligator and tried to save it (in case it was losing the battle, but who could tell?) Suddenly, one girl got entangled in the snake's coils and the next thing you knew, the girl, the snake, and the alligator were all tangled and falling from the roof onto the sidewalk in a tangled intertwine mess. Next thing I know the girl is being strangled in the middle of the road by the snake being coiled around her neck. I raced to help her cause she fell near me and the snake which seemed like a grey ribbon bit into my right forearm with its fangs. When I woke I was trying to yank the fangs out of my wrist.

Dark Parable: godwink

My dreamlet: I dreamed of being on a hill with my hubby. We had bought a patch of land. A woman who bought a patch of land beside ours was sitting on a bench nearby. We were to build houses on that land. I wanted to ask her for her patch of land, that we could switch. But then I thought about it. It would be a good thing or it could be a committment to something that might not turn out to be good. I kept thinking, "What if we switch and build the house on the patch of land that she originally bought and it turns out to have been the wrong decision down the line?" But for some reason, I kinda liked where our house would be situated.

Was wondering if the indecision dream is God challenging me to decide. Hard for him to answer a prayer if I'm vacillating. Sooo weird. Am reading a book and I keep reaching sections which mirror these dreams. It's as if God prepared me for the book. Same thing happened with a website I visit. The Lord does go before his people to prepare a place.

The upshot of this particular chapter in the book is: A) the brain doesn't make decisions, the heart (under God's control) does. B) small minds can make decisions. C) Great minds (like that belonging to yours truly) sees the pros and cons of every decision so they end up with analysis paralysis. D) Back to A: Decide what your heart wants.

There are so many other echoes of past dreamlets in this book. Who knew I'd be reviewing this book? God did.

I think about the inability to dream with the heart. Being sick for a long time can do that. One becomes mired in pros and cons, practicalities, the fear of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. When you've been sick and your child is sick, change tends to bring worse stuff not better...so one accepts the status quo. The devil we fear as opposed to the devil we don't know.

I'm thinking again about St Thomas and that his unbelief wasn't rooted in a disbelief in the irrational but in pessimism -- a belief that good stuff, let alone good supernatural stuff could simply not happen to him, that life was primarily a melancholy business. Prayers are answered from the heart, not from the minds. And I have to work at this attuning my heart to dream and hope again.

So now what have I learned? That God wants me to hope wonderfully and to not be questioning myself in certain things, to live and experiment with life a bit more fearlessly. To risk. And the fact that he made me have tons of dreamlets to prepare me for this book -- which by the way is by Katrina Bos and which is called Why not skip the Cancer?" shows me his love and immediacy in my life. Will see. Can a woman almost 50 who's been sick for so long and whose son has been sick for so long learn to dream hopeful dreams again?

Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

C

Dark Parable: the drums

Dreamed of younger son. First we were in a house that seemed to once have been a performing arts theater. It was nice to live in although I didn't quite make myself at home in it. I had a husband who kinda looked like an army trainee recruit. (I think of Charlie Sheen in the film Cadence.) A sweet guy with army friends. Because the new apartment once a theater, the apartments, living arrangements, and rooms were a bit strange but nevertheless I liked living there and felt it was an improvement on my former place. Except that the house looked like a theater and was in the business section of town (which bothered me if it was coded for residential living.) It was very public on a public corner. There was even a fruit true (like our pear tree?) in the back. I was going upstairs with younger son but although our apartment was on the second floor, the elevators seemed to go between floors and you had to take a stair to the floor proper.

After losing son for a while in the tangle to get to our rooms, I found him and he joined me on the elevator with my boss' wife. I wanted to show her that he wasn't stupid and she seemed surprised that he actually knew his own name. Aaargh. (In real life, she's a sweetie, though.) She looked at his feet as he entered the elevator. In the dream one of his middle toes were twisted. She said, "What happened to his toe/foot?" I knew that the toes were broken because he kicks sometimes when he's angry and it's ruined his feet. But I didn't say it. (In dreams, whenever someone asks me a question, I pay real attention to it when I wake. Cause I know I'm being directed to think of something. So now, of course, I'm worried that younger son is hurting his foot with all that kicking of walls and furniture and people that he does.) I just walked away worried about his feet. When we got off we found a music studio called Blue Labs. Younger son picked up a guitar lying outside but the musicians were very angry that he touched it. Also seems that that Blue Labs was closed.

Met a girl named Risky. She and I began talking about learning to live in the strange house in which we had found ourselves. I said, "I've been thinking of this as something I was just passing through, but even if I'm just passing through here, it's better than the old pace. And since I don't know how long I'll be here, I'll try to make this look as much as my home." So my husband and I took out all the stuff I had in boxes -- toys, toiletries, furniture, etc-- and we started to actually decorate the place and accept that it was home. I remember a bathroom that looked like a beauty parlor with five chairs in front of a large mirror. It was a strange house but it felt as if we had a community. I got annoyed with my husband though because he brought an army buddy home to stay with us. Then younger son found a little toy drum outside of another music studio and attempted to play it. But he hit it once then opened his mouth as if he was screaming. No sound came out of course but there was the feeling that he wanted to scream and that that was what he was doing, screaming out his frustrations. One of the musicians in the room looked at me and said, "I will do it. I will brave teaching him." I thought he was very sweet to volunteer to do that. But I also think he felt it was very necessary that younger son learn the drums. I suspect it was a music angel who volunteered. (Yes, folks can laugh but I decided a long time ago not to care if what I said was laughable to some folks. Life is too fricking short to fall into the snare of the fear of man.)

So upshot....am gonna teach younger sons to play drums, but it might be hard. Am taking this as advice from God. Will honor the dream by buying the kid a drum. Maybe asking a (patient) drummer friend to teach him. Will see.

Dark Parable: University of St Alfred

I dreamed I attended a college called University of St Alfred. As I walked through its halls I began to wonder if I had researched it well enough. I ketp wondering about the flick Accepted, about some folks who created a college so stupid folks could be accepted. It was understaffed, underattended. I met another girl and the both of us became really worried about the standards of the school. We were hungry and we went to the dining hall. We saw a lone attendant, a black kid who couldn't quite speak well but when he saw us he tried so hard to be helpful. Like a clerk in a store who comes over to help that rare visiting customer. Someone in the shadows who might have been his boss was looking at him as if studying his work skills. He tried to tell us what there was to eat but the words weren't said right. Kinda garbled or no sounds came out. The way stuff happens in dreams. All I heard (or maybe I figured it out from the weirdly near-empty food showcases) was that for breakfast they had rice and they had eggs and grits. Neither of which I wanted. I walked with this friend through the college loooking about to re-assure myself that I hadn't done something stupid by going to that college. I saw a girl who looked really hip kinda goth. She was sitting in a room where some other student folks were lying in big colorful kid bubble suits on bean bags. I came to her and said, "I should've researched this college before I signed up. I worked in the accounting office of my college and maybe that's how I know the college's name but perhaps__" She interrupted me and said something like it was a good college. She knew it was good for her because she got some weird illness that women get when men put on their used condoms and women got it again. I'm thinking to myself, what a ditz! They can tell your STD and no one else could so they're a good college. I said to the girl I was with, "Let's go on the computer (I meant go to the internet) and research the rep of this school.

When I woke up I was very sad that I had attended this school, then I realized it was a dream and became very happy because I hadn't had a dream in a while. The first thing I thought was A) Go on the web and find out who St Alfred is. B) Is it possible that Univ of ST Alfred represents what I think of the present state of the church? C) Is it possible that I shouldn't judge the school yet since I didn't really attend any classes in the dream?

And that innocent little black kid trying so hard to do the right thing...and didn't realize what a bad university it is.


Went online and found a 1) stalfred which is a sneaker, tee-shirt company. Very hip. http://www.stalfred.com/blog/
2) Found a college in upstate NY called University of St Alfred.
3) Also looked up St Alfred. Found this: St. Alfred the Great on a Catholic saint site.
Feastday: October 26
899

King of Wessex, scholar, and renowned Christian monarch. Alfred was born in 849, the fifth son of the Wessex king. He was a great scholar, translating classics for his people. Instead, he became king and was forced to spend most of his reign in conflict with the Danes who were then threatening England. His work as a patron of the arts, literature, and especially the Church made him a beloved figure in England.

I really think this dream is important because I haven't had a dream in a while but I can't seem to understand.

Got this interpretation from Rose Marie on my dream group:
I think it's dead on.


-- In dream_visions@yahoogroups.com, penofthewayfarer wrote:
>
>

the dream could have different levels of meaning.

Are you concerned about low standards that are accepted and passed off as ok but wreak havoc with people? Or that unscrupulous people appear to protect you but are in fact INFECTING YOU WITH DISEASE. An allusion to the pharisees and the horror that Jesus railed against. only 100 times worse. What a visual picture. and the passivity of the woman who didnt get angry with this !

i think this is about the state of the church and your relationship to "her"
it could just be about your relationship to "the church" as you are involved
with her and not the whole universal church because i believe that God's true
church is not like that, she is beautiful!. but this is more what presents itself
as the church and is false or that which is the status quo. it may mean that
your ministry is outside the confines of the church, your mission field
is in the world. if st. alfreds is a sneaker company than it adds to the idea of
your call to evangelize in the world. "how beautiful are the feet of them
who bring good news" Alfred, who i had not heard of, was in the arts
as a christian, making a difference in society amongst both the common people
and keeping the Danes influence out of England. werent the vikings or barbarians from Denmark? If so, that might allude to keeping warring plunderers out of your neck of the woods. Spiritually, that is. which goes along with what you have been dreaming about Gabe and your family and the healing for him etc.

i had a similar important dream last year when i left the institutional church.
it was a wonderful dream that cast me out into the marketplace.

http://pen-of-the-wayfarer.blogspot.com

I think Rose-Marie got the dream down.

There are so many people out there who really need some help, some advice, some standards...and they don't know any. The teen girl who looked vaguely gothy, the little black kid (he looked so proud to be there with his work-study job at a great university) and the girl who was walking with me. Kinda overweight white girl. But she and I were searching for the truth. The others were so lost.

Dark Parable: gorgeous hunk, addiction spirit, kitty

I dreamed of a young man who was very beautiful and who seemed to be my other soul. I didn't know him but when I met him and we hugged, a peace went through my body. I couldn't stop holding him but we had to part. I lived on an island or maybe he did. Forgot which. But there were no buses to get us to each other and he had no money to pay for a cab. A woman said to me: "he's a bit odd, you know. He had sex with my father. Just a bit needy. Are you sure about this?" I said, "That's okay. Don't worry about that." A TV crew came and was asking people about various stuff and I told them my story that I was 50 and had fallen in love with a 20 year old...and we couldn't get together. It seemed they were beginning to decide to do the show around me and this guy. I was wondering how I could get in touch with him because I didn't know his phone number. It's been years since I felt such deep love for anyone in a dream. Not sure if it was good though. Could be a seducing spirit.

In my other dream I dreamed a pastor I knew had an infant son who was demonized. She tried to cast the demon out but she didn't know how to do it because she hadn't studied it. I showed her hot it was done and she was surprised to see that I knew a bit more than she did in this matter. Seems she had moved into a house with an addiction spirit and the addiction spirit had made its previous owner addicted to video games. I always dream of confronting addiction spirits. In this case it was the same spirit of addiction that was responsible for substance abuse as well as video games addiction. Same spirit different manifestation.

I dreamed my cat squeezed itself into a large plastic bottle with a tiny hole. How she got in there I don't know but at first I thought she would get herself out. But then the more she breathed the more the bottle got sucked in and collapsed around her and soon it was almost the shape of her bottle and no room to move. I got nervous and bit the bottle with my teeth until I got the kitty out. I almost feel the bottle represents an evil spirit which takes on the shape of those it demonizes.

GOT THIS INTERPRETATION FROM ROSE MARIE OVER AT
http://pen-of-the-wayfarer.blogspot.com

I think it's totally dead on.

they all speak of things that, once they get in, they dont leave easily nor are welcome after they make themselves known. a relationship that looks ok, but underneath are big issues,
spirits that dwell in a house and then try to inhabit even a baby, and a cat who once ensnared in a bottle, cannot leave. to you, to the people who moved into the house, to the cat, it all seemed like a good idea at the time, but led to entrapment. beware.

Dark Parable: Amputated Extra Legs

I was so distraught last night -- as I often am-- because of younger son's
sufferings and last night I prayed and prayed in tongues and really had a
heart-to-heart praise/beg talk with God. Then I went to sleep. This morning I
had a dream.

I dreamed my younger son developed a problem in his feet and two of them had to
be amputated above the knee. He could still walk around with his two inner legs
but the outer ones were like these useless external appendages. I pushed him
around in a baby carrier. I was so upset because he had no friends because he
was handicaped and because his legs weren't right. We came to the bottom of the
stairs and I dropped a dime at the bottom of the steps. I looked for it near the
corner but couldn't find it. Then I looked up and saw that my son was climbing
the stairs with only his two legs. I thought, "uhm, this kid will do well. He's
managing with only his two legs." Then I heard him call for his father (my
husband) "Yuke!" Which was his way for saying "Luke." I was so happy. The dream
gave me hope. Don't know what the two extra half-legs meant. I mean, in real
life folks have two legs, not more than two.

tuna and lobster dream

I had a little dreamlet that was interesting. Dreamlets are important things. But a small dream is as important as a large dream...and sometimes even more so. It's as if God and/or the body wants to get the news to us in clear, clear, images without all that extra stuff. And I've been so sick lately, this dream definitely is speaking to me about something I need to hear. The question is: what is it saying?

I dreamt my husband or son had made seared tuna. But there was also a skillet with lobster on the burner. I knew I shouldn't eat the lobster because it is forbidden in the Bible -- the cockroach of the ocean, my gyno would say-- but I took it anyway. Then the dream ended.

First, I think the dream is about disobedience and human apetites. We are led into danger by something we "prefer" even if it's dangerous to our health.

Secondly, I think it refers to spiritual food. We have to be careful what spiritual things we allow ourselves to listen to. Itching ears want to hear certain things.

Thirdly, I think it refers to physical food. We have to eat food that is healthy for us. Non-packaged, non-processed foods primarily. Foods in MSG, with soy, etc...is unhealthy for all of us in general and very very unhealthy for some of us specifically. Also, come to think of it, lobster has a lot of glutamic acid.

Fourthly, I think it refers to emotional food such as entertainment. Today on SciFi channel, there's a creepy crawlie fest. Mosquito, Locust, etc. (Actually, locust is allowed on the Biblical diet) But perhaps I should do a lot of Bible reading, praising, simging...instead of watching movies today.

Fifthly, the tuna was real tuna. Not the canned type. That canned type gets me so sick sometimes because of the "broth" it's processed in. Frankly, i always think that real tuna is just plain too dry...but I gotta do what I gotta do.


-C

Praise God for night-time dreams

I love dreams soooo much. Not only are they a kind of mini-vacation, but they are God's little nightly telephone call to us to guide us and to protect and enlighten us.

I cannot tell you how often God has used a dream to protect and guide me. I once had a dream in which two teenaged boys from up the road were beating my young 3 year old with iron pipes. Terrified I woke up. Around mid-day those two boys from up the road visited. They held up a little piece of yarn. "We want to play with Logan. We're playing cowboys and Indians." They let the yarn flow along my hand. "See it doesn't hurt. We won't hurt him." Needless to say although my son wanted to go out and play with them cause he was a lonely kid, I didn't. God had warned me.

In spite of the fact that doctors couldn't really help with the fibro, my health has been helped greatly by dreams of water and by coincidences that told me to drink water.

Many Christians don't think much about their dreams. Like Aristotle, they belittle them. But those that ignore their dreams and don't know how to interpret them are ignoring God's help and guidance.

Dreams are often full of word play. And why not? Jesus is the Word; He can have his puns.

One pun I remember is one found in Jeremiah. The pun was on the "almond" which often appears symbolically in the Bible:

"The Lord asked me: Jeremiah, what do you see?
I answered: I see a branch of an almond tree (shaked).
The Lord said to me:
You have seen right,
For I am watchful (shoked)
to bring My word to pass" (Jeremiah 1:11-12).

I know there are other puns in the scripture i just don't know where a good topic to research.

So when someone says "word association is just the human consciousness playing around" we can say, "No, the Bible showed us -- long before modern psychology did-- that God Himself uses punning and word association to speak to people.

Some dreams come from our own spirits, from our soulish fears, from eating the wrong things, from evil spirits...but so many come from God. Yes, it's sometimes hard to believe that God is so intimately near us that His Holy Spirit talks to us every day but He really is. Praise ye the Lord.-C