MP: Why This Dream Now?
I just woke from a bad dream. Not the kind that terrifies you with monsters, but one that leaves you feeling hollow.
Disclaimer: F-, I know this isn't what you say, it's only what I dreamed, and I have no idea why my dreaming self put these words in your mouth.
I dreamed I was visiting my friends in Utah, and walking along towards their church with them. We were having some kind of conversation, and somehow I ended up walking with just one friend, F-, and for some reason the issue of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir came up. F- asked me if I'd ever sing with them, and I said, "Hell yes, in a heartbeat." (On waking, I'm surprised I used the word "hell"-I usually try to clean up my language around my Mormon friends.)
She expressed shock that I'd profane her church by doing such a thing. I tried to explain it was a hypothetical question, and I knew it would never happen, and I was answering as a singer. That I'd love the chance, though I'll never have it, to sing with that great choir.
F- insisted I was proposing blasphemy of the highest order, because not only was I not Mormon, but I was queer and therefor not of God at all.
I turned to F- and said, "Wait, you think that God doesn't love me?"
She said yes, she thought that. Knew that.
I was stunned. I said, "But you know me! You know me to be a good person, a kind person, a loving person, right?"
She said no, she didn't know that of me.
I backed away from her, horrified.
Somehow I had another friend with me, S-, who for reasons I don't understand, was in this dream a gay man. In waking life he's straight and married. But he was gay and single in the dream. Maybe I put him there because I trust him to be rational. Because I trust he loves me as I am, and in this dream I desperately needed a friend.
We had arrived at the church and were preparing to enter to hear the service. There were a lot of people around. Families and couples streaming in.
I was still looking at F-, still stunned and in pain. I said, "Then to you I'm evidence of God's fallibility? I'm God's mistake? I and people like me?"
I didn't hear her answer, but I knew what it would be. I knew she'd say that I wasn't a child of God at all, but a child of Satan. Like Tolkein's orcs, a foul perversion never blessed nor created by God at all.
I was heartbroken, and felt so betrayed. The other friend I was with, S-, pulled me into the church. I didn't want to go, knowing that this whole huge church-and it was a huge one, with seats like a theatre, and a thousand people there to worship-that this whole congregation, by virtue of their doctrine, thought S- and me unloved and unlovable by the Creator. But S- insisted and we went in.
As the church was crowded, we had to go down towards the front to get seats. We passed by one row where they had just finished passing the communion cup, a large wine glass with red wine in it (and I know Mormon's don't drink, but once again the dream world isn't always accurate.) A pretty woman with long, curly red hair asked me to pass the cup to the next row. I was afraid to touch it, knowing what F- had said about what these people would think of me if they knew about me, but I couldn't see a way to politely refuse, so I took the cup and tried to pass it to the next row, but they said no, I was doing it wrong, it was supposed to skip a row and go to the next one after that. The people who saw my error laughed, and I knew it was because they thought I was from a small church and didn't know how things worked in their big church. That they all assumed I was one of them. Somehow it just made me feel smaller.
S- and I found seats next to a family with a young child with her leg in a cast. Another smiling, happy family. And we sat there, with an empty seat on either side of us, isolated like the spot of penicillin in a culture of bacteria. We waited for the preacher to come out, and that's when I woke.
Heartsick.
Why would my dreaming self put such unloving words in my friend's mouth? Why am I dreaming such a heartbreaking thing? I woke knowing that the dream was wrong, that of course I am of God. But I feel so alone now, and small, and lost.
I'll go to my church in a few hours, my loving, affirming, gay church, where the message preached is the opposite of what I dreamed. God created us all. She does not make mistakes.
I've never given a lot of thought to the myth of Satan, but even Lucifer himself was an angel created and loved by God. So all things come from the Creator.
Writing this I feel uncomfortable with using God as if God were like a person, someone we can understand. I think more of a great Creative Force, which is unknowable to the earth-bound mind, but knowable in the soul. I don't think of a single, masculine, paternal God, but of Gods, God, Goddess, Creator in Many Guises, Buddha, Bodhisattva, the Source from which all comes and to which all goes.
Maybe this dream is really about my discomfort with most Christian theology. Maybe it's simply a face-value dream about what I fear is really in the hearts of my Mormon friends. I don't know.
What I do know is that at the moment I feel like weeping.
Thankful for: friends who see past our differences, my church, the Love of Creation
To do: wrap gifts, make boiled custard, go to church
Disclaimer: F-, I know this isn't what you say, it's only what I dreamed, and I have no idea why my dreaming self put these words in your mouth.
I dreamed I was visiting my friends in Utah, and walking along towards their church with them. We were having some kind of conversation, and somehow I ended up walking with just one friend, F-, and for some reason the issue of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir came up. F- asked me if I'd ever sing with them, and I said, "Hell yes, in a heartbeat." (On waking, I'm surprised I used the word "hell"-I usually try to clean up my language around my Mormon friends.)
She expressed shock that I'd profane her church by doing such a thing. I tried to explain it was a hypothetical question, and I knew it would never happen, and I was answering as a singer. That I'd love the chance, though I'll never have it, to sing with that great choir.
F- insisted I was proposing blasphemy of the highest order, because not only was I not Mormon, but I was queer and therefor not of God at all.
I turned to F- and said, "Wait, you think that God doesn't love me?"
She said yes, she thought that. Knew that.
I was stunned. I said, "But you know me! You know me to be a good person, a kind person, a loving person, right?"
She said no, she didn't know that of me.
I backed away from her, horrified.
Somehow I had another friend with me, S-, who for reasons I don't understand, was in this dream a gay man. In waking life he's straight and married. But he was gay and single in the dream. Maybe I put him there because I trust him to be rational. Because I trust he loves me as I am, and in this dream I desperately needed a friend.
We had arrived at the church and were preparing to enter to hear the service. There were a lot of people around. Families and couples streaming in.
I was still looking at F-, still stunned and in pain. I said, "Then to you I'm evidence of God's fallibility? I'm God's mistake? I and people like me?"
I didn't hear her answer, but I knew what it would be. I knew she'd say that I wasn't a child of God at all, but a child of Satan. Like Tolkein's orcs, a foul perversion never blessed nor created by God at all.
I was heartbroken, and felt so betrayed. The other friend I was with, S-, pulled me into the church. I didn't want to go, knowing that this whole huge church-and it was a huge one, with seats like a theatre, and a thousand people there to worship-that this whole congregation, by virtue of their doctrine, thought S- and me unloved and unlovable by the Creator. But S- insisted and we went in.
As the church was crowded, we had to go down towards the front to get seats. We passed by one row where they had just finished passing the communion cup, a large wine glass with red wine in it (and I know Mormon's don't drink, but once again the dream world isn't always accurate.) A pretty woman with long, curly red hair asked me to pass the cup to the next row. I was afraid to touch it, knowing what F- had said about what these people would think of me if they knew about me, but I couldn't see a way to politely refuse, so I took the cup and tried to pass it to the next row, but they said no, I was doing it wrong, it was supposed to skip a row and go to the next one after that. The people who saw my error laughed, and I knew it was because they thought I was from a small church and didn't know how things worked in their big church. That they all assumed I was one of them. Somehow it just made me feel smaller.
S- and I found seats next to a family with a young child with her leg in a cast. Another smiling, happy family. And we sat there, with an empty seat on either side of us, isolated like the spot of penicillin in a culture of bacteria. We waited for the preacher to come out, and that's when I woke.
Heartsick.
Why would my dreaming self put such unloving words in my friend's mouth? Why am I dreaming such a heartbreaking thing? I woke knowing that the dream was wrong, that of course I am of God. But I feel so alone now, and small, and lost.
I'll go to my church in a few hours, my loving, affirming, gay church, where the message preached is the opposite of what I dreamed. God created us all. She does not make mistakes.
I've never given a lot of thought to the myth of Satan, but even Lucifer himself was an angel created and loved by God. So all things come from the Creator.
Writing this I feel uncomfortable with using God as if God were like a person, someone we can understand. I think more of a great Creative Force, which is unknowable to the earth-bound mind, but knowable in the soul. I don't think of a single, masculine, paternal God, but of Gods, God, Goddess, Creator in Many Guises, Buddha, Bodhisattva, the Source from which all comes and to which all goes.
Maybe this dream is really about my discomfort with most Christian theology. Maybe it's simply a face-value dream about what I fear is really in the hearts of my Mormon friends. I don't know.
What I do know is that at the moment I feel like weeping.
Thankful for: friends who see past our differences, my church, the Love of Creation
To do: wrap gifts, make boiled custard, go to church