Dream Story

A bunch of us are here, members of our company come to set up a factory. But people are just partying. We have come here with orders from our company. They are ignoring the orders. I hate this kind of thing! So I am trying to do something about it. I am looking for one person, perhaps two, whom I can persuade to "come back to life," to pursue again the way of life, which is reason and respect for agreements. There is ice beneath my feet, the ice of a frozen stream which runs through the town, a stream heavily shaded by willow trees. I move from group to group in the town using as my road the frozen stream. Loud partying everywhere. I try now and then to get their attention. They act as if they do not hear me, do not see me.

I finally get someone's attention. He agrees to take me to another part of the area, a place just outside the town. We are silent until we near a coffee shop by the side of the road.

"There is something I need here. I'll just be a moment," he tells me as he enters the parking lot and pulls into a space. "Stay here. I'll just be a minute or two," he says as he gets out of the car.

I have a book with me and begin to read. It is by Thomas Merton. The section I'm reading is about a fourteenth-century Muslim mystic. In it I find:

"To belong to Allah

Is to see in your own existence

And in all that pertains to it

Something that is neither yours

Nor from yourself,

Something you have on loan;

To see your being in His Being,

Your subsistence in His Subsistence,

Your strength in His Strength:

Thus you will recognize in yourself

His title to possession of you

As Lord,

And your own title as servant:

Which is Nothingness."

As I read this I think of something which I said to myself one late fall afternoon, a very long time ago. It came at the end of a three-day process: "...to be more intimate with God than I am with my own self..." I think to of something else which I read lately in one of Merton's other books, something like, "We cannot get to God. God gets to us. It is God possessing us which is life with Him." And then there comes to mind from The Hound of Heaven: "from those strong feet that followed, followed after, But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace..."

Now I realize that my companion has been gone for more than a minute or two, realize that he is still inside the shop and talking to someone. I decide to go in and tell my companion and whoever he is talking with that we must return to the way of truth by returning to our work for the company. Or become monsters.

I get out of the car. There is a security device by the car which I'm supposed to lock with a key I have. I use the key. As I begin to walk towards the shop, I decide out of curiosity to try the key in another device. As I begin to try it, a woman passing by says, "It won't work in that lock," just as I turn the key to find that in fact the key does work. "It works!" I yell back at her in friendly manner. "Ha!" she returns, as if to say, "The system it belongs to is just another example of their nonsense."

Waking from the dream, I start drafting a story inspired by it. As I do so, a voice in my head keeps trying to harness me to itself and prevent the creation of the story, prevent anything in me but the horror of talking with the thing. The story starts with a Bible study meeting. It takes place the previous evening in the lobby of a hotel. We are sitting in comfortable chairs grouped around a gas fireplace. There are six of us. We have no masks on, tho' we sit a bit apart from each other; five feet or so anyway. It is my first time at the meeting.

The meeting opens with some remarks by the leader. We then begin to read from Genesis. We read the first six chapters aloud, each of us reading a chapter. Two or three times people, including myself, comment on the reading without acknowledging the leader. I talk about a nearby church. The people at the church are charismatics. I had gone there for the first time on the previous Sunday. The first half hour of the service was like a rock concert which God and a host of angels had got hold of. I was happy there, ecstatic even. My effort to talk about the service is quickly silenced, as are the efforts of the others who try to speak. "OK," I say to myself. "At the next meeting, observe, ask a few questions maybe. Then decide if you want to change how the meeting is run."

Then I realize that this story really begins many years ago, in a playground in Charlotte, NC. A boy is shoved to the ground. Then he is struck by a lightning bolt between the shoulder blades. "Zeus did it!" I cry to myself as I remember the experience, remember the transformation.