I'm playing hooky from church today -- I'm still feeling viral, albeit not nearly as bad as I did on Friday.
Part of my healing regimen has been lots of sleep. Usually I don't get enough -- six hours if I'm lucky -- but this weekend I've been absolutely luxuriating in sleep. And I've been having wild, vivid dreams, as if my brain is making up for weeks of REM deprivation.
Some of them I can't really remember; I just wake up happy, with the distinct impression that a good time was had by all. Others have been those very busy, intriguing dreams with huge casts of characters and tangled plot lines, dreams where I can't wait to see what's going to happen next, and am rather disappointed when I wake up mid-adventure.
But last night I had a particularly funny dream that I'll entitle "David Lynch Meets the ELCA." I was on the campus of MSU, my alma mater. The ELCA was having its national assembly there. One of my online friends, someone I've never met in real life, was with me (this happens a lot in my dreams -- I feel that I know a lot of you), and I was trying to be a good host and make a good impression. We wound up at what was supposed to be a keynote address; got separated by a few rows of seats. As we were sitting there waiting for the ecclesiastical big guns to come out, a speaker was introduced, a Finnish-American pastor who, the emcee said, enjoyed sharing the gift of music with others. And up to the stage came -- a garden gnome. That's what he looked like -- a portly, red-bearded little garden gnome clad in clerical mufti, who proceeded to do a cheery song-and-dance number. I looked back at my friend; her head was in her hands in an Omigod manner; then I looked back again, and she was gone. (Which is how I knew on some level that this was a dream; because I'm sure most of you would love to see a munchkinesque pastor-gnome with a Yooper accent doing cabaret in his vestments; might indeed pay good money for that opportunity.) Oh, crap, or words to that effect, I thought in my dream. I scurried out of the auditorium, fending off fellow delegates trying to talk shop -- Get away from me! -- and back to the conference center to find my friend...where I discovered I'd lost my room key. At which moment the dog jumped on my chest, as is his custom each morning, waking me up.
Any armchair analyists or interpreters of prophetic utterance, knock yourselves out.
4 comments:
this is HYSTERICAL. top notch dream humor you have, lutheranchik. Laugh out loud funny.
Between my dream life and the bird feeder, who needs television, I say!
I'm still trying to figure out the meaning of the dwarf, though. Come to think of it, he also looked a lot like the fellow who delivers our office supplies at work...only, of course, much shorter. And vested. And Finnish.
Hmmn...I spent most of yesterday in a vaguely somnolent state too, but the most interesting dream was of an all too likely schism in my congregation over the Wrong Tune to a favourite hymn.
I woke up just as they began to hurl hymnbooks at each other...when I realised that the terrible terriers had knocked over the teetering pile of bedside books AND the phone was ringing.
Think I need more sleep...
Kathryn: An amazingly large number of my dreams take place in church, but it's always like an amalgam of all the churches I've ever attended.
I'm laughing about the hymn broughhaha...that really is art imitating life!;-) (At our place we currently seem to be having something of a difference in artistic vision regarding ceramic praying hands -- a parishoner memorial gift to the congregation from years ago -- that keep disappearing and appearing on the windowsills.)
You know, I've never been to a Churchwide Assembly...maybe there is a diminutive singing pastor from "up north, ja, you betcha," who entertains the delegates. Maybe a veteran can enlighten me.;-)
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