church life

I was at a church picnic. To prepare for it, I had been assigned the work of gathering potatoes. These potatoes were to be cooked, mashed and served. The potatoes, which had been damaged by snow, were in a garden off a main highway. The highway department had created a detour by plowing out an area near the garden. At the garden I encountered bears, who were already there digging them up and eating them. I was afraid to harvest. So, I didn’t. I went back to the picnic to tell the man who had offered to cook them that I was afraid to go near the bears.

I looked around the picnicking grounds, which were in a wooded area in the middle of the city at Hamm’s Hill. There were babies everywhere. They were in the crawling stage. They were unattended and the feces they were losing from their diapers lay everywhere. The food was set up carnival style. Vendors sold it in booths like the state fair. Everything seemed to be backwards and chaotic. I wondered, “Why did a man cook and a woman gather in a dangerous place? Why wasn’t there anyone tending to the babies? Why was the food set up carnival style with people getting chicken from one booth, walking to another booth for mashed potatoes, another for gravy, etc?”

Later, I was sitting inside a building with others who were watching videos in a theatre area of the church. Children and babies were again playing everywhere. A very friendly, interesting man sat down next to me. We talked and watched the video. Bears appeared on the video screen. They were eating potatoes. The man told me not to be afraid of bears. When I looked at him to comment, he morphed into a bear (a superficially friendly bear) and then morphed back again.

This dream was had by a friend of mine and is dedicated to Michelle, who is brave enough to share a dream that “felt” significant. It’s risky to share dreams and attribute meaning to them. Previously, I’ve been ambiguous mostly—calling them parables. It gets close to intellectual suicide. But I suppose, if challenged, I would just argue my point in uber-intellectual cant.

As for these dreams, I find them much more aggressive in their critique of the church than, say, the Church Infiltrator Series below. This one is actually directly applicable to a specific church. Keep checking up on more infiltrators. I’m working on them.