I had a wild dream just before I got up this morning. As is often the case, the setting was at a church, though outdoors this time, on a sidewalk, and apparently there’s a meeting planned—some sort of church council meeting.
I’m the chairperson, and the committee is made up of way too many people, mostly family members, along with Tiger Woods and Sarah Paulson, for some reason. It’s a crazy, unruly session that never comes to order. People keep coming and going, there are young children present, my sister-in-law has to get up and take phone calls, since she is an actual bishop of a synod. People are tending to other business, while I sit there in no particular hurry, waiting for things to magically calm down and come to order.
There must be 70 or 80 people, maybe more, on this committee—unwieldy at best—and I’ve come to see it as the latest in a series of dreams that are actually commentaries on what’s happening in real life: disorganization, ineffectiveness, no sense of purpose. I’m either unwilling or incapable of bringing things to order, of taking control and actually leading.
In other dreams, I’m totally unprepared for a Sunday morning worship service—no sermon, improperly dressed, a roomful of people milling about, waiting for the service to begin. Meanwhile, I’m just wingin’ it, out to lunch, and the feeling I’m left with as I awaken is one of relief that it’s just a dream. But the questions linger: Why do I keep having such dreams, since I’m four years retired? What am I supposed to be learning? Is there a message in them that I haven’t yet uncovered? Or are they merely commentary on what’s actually unfolding in my waking life?
I think it might be that last thing.
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