An Odd Dream
by V.E. on September 23rd, 2007
filed under personal, spirituality
I had a weird dream last night. Maybe all dreams are weird/odd in their own right, but I don’t usually remember my dreams. Anyway, I was planning to attend church this morning (voluntarily for the first time in a long time) and last night, the last thing on my mind was when I had to get up this morning to get to church on time. So I guess that’s why I dreamed about attending church. It was weird.
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I was late for the service I wanted to attend at some other church, so I attended one near my house. In the front (or on the side, I’m not sure) of the church was this huge fountain that I somehow had to get across to get into the sanctuary. It looked relatively shallow, so I figured I could just wade across and deal with the wet later. Well, I started in and then, in turning a corner (I said the fountain was huge, didn’t I?) the water suddenly became much deeper and I fell in and was completely soaked. I wasn’t really bothered by this, except that it took my a little longer to get to the sanctuary door.
When I got to the door, it opened into what looked like a choir room that had been converted into a classroom (not the sanctuary, I don’t know why). There were desks and (apparently) each student had his or her own desk. They were real desks, too, not those crappy school ones with fold up tops. The desks were in pairs facing one another and had hutches for books, etc. I didn’t have one since I didn’t attend church regularly, but I set my stuff (I don’t know when I acquired “stuff”) on one of the desks and sat down on the floor to tie my shoes (I think). I was still pretty wet when people started shuffling in to get their own changes of clothes; none of them were wet, but no one was allowed inside the sanctuary without robes. A guy came up to “my” desk and swiped his card in the hutch to get his robes out. I offered to move my stuff, since the desk was obviously his, but he said it was fine and that he was getting anointed and becoming an official in the church (sort of like becoming a priesthood holder in the Mormon church, I think).
I asked him where I could get my own robe, and he gave me a collar thingy (the kind that some choirs wear over their robes) and told me that the extra robes were on stage in the sanctuary. So, I headed into the sanctuary. It was huge. The stage was long and wide and the first row of chairs was pushed way back away from the end of the stage. But there was still room for thousands of chairs behind the first row. The rows were long and sprawling and looked like rolling hills of green grass with interspersed red and yellow “flowers” (which were actually the chairs) placed at relatively random intervals. I went up toward one of the hills and then realized I still needed a robe, so headed back toward the stage. On the stage wall hung four robes of various sizes. I was trying to reach one when another guy came up and pulled it down off the hook for me. I got the impression women weren’t allowed on stage, but he didn’t say anything and I was shown to a small, dark back room where I could change.
When I finished, I didn’t know where to go, so the guy took me to one of the grassy parts of one of the hills stage left. I opened up my blanket (I don’t know when I got a blanket) and laid it out on the grass to sit down. Somehow, Summer (a girl from my high school–Bobby, you remember Summer?) was sitting near me (or rather, I think I was sitting near her since she was there first) but she didn’t recognize me until I said something like, “Hi, I haven’t seen you since high school.” We got to chatting while the service went on and somewhere in that time I noticed that there was a sign hanging above the stage that said “Officials, please direct WOMEN and VISITORS to the seats.” I asked Summer about the “no women” thing and she rolled her eyes and said something along the lines of: “Apparently, only men can receive divine revelation from God.” I was somewhat put off by this fact and said, “I really need to attend a church where there’s at least one woman minister.” Summer laughed and replied, “I wish you’d been here before I joined this church, ’cause I would’ve come along with you”–as if, now that she’d joined, she couldn’t (or didn’t want to) leave.
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There was more to the dream—including a roller coaster behind the sanctuary in that “small, dark room” in which I’d changed into robes, some kind of Canal St.-esque market place selling watermelons, and my meeting with one of the pastors about my conduct after the service (which was, apparently, not becoming of a young lady)—but I don’t remember enough of that stuff to really say anything about it. I remember the whole thing feeling extremely cultish, and when I woke up I was exhausted.
I thought to myself, “Like hell I’m going to church twice today!”
Yeah, I remember Summer. She was in the same religious ed group that I was. Ugh. I hated being forced to go there. Though as I recall, she makes excellent chocolate chip cookies.