Cheese Dreams

I am a vivid dreamer. 

Some dreams seem to be very obvious God-dreams. They contain something very profound, life changing perhaps. They have got God stamped all over them.

Other dreams I call “cheese dreams”. Nothing profound happens and they seem to be linked to something that happened at work.  I assume that it’s just the way the brain sorts out stuff from the day. They can be interesting, or not. They can leave a bad cloud hanging over me in the morning, or not. Does the fact that I remember them mean they are not true cheese dreams at all? Sometimes I sit down and pick the dream apart looking for some kind of revelation. Sometimes there is vague insight to be gleaned. Most of the time I put it down to cheese.

This morning I fell among dream interpreters. The intention was a cup of tea with a friend and a handing over of the poetry manuscript for book 2. She had offered to take a look at it and cast a poet’s eye over it.  I’m not looking for any major overhauls of any of the poems, just a gut reaction about whether they made the grade. I have a few poems waiting in the wings for last minute evictions.

Another friend joined us. Apparently I was sort of gate crashing their weekly dream interpretation meeting. The group was usually bigger than just the two of them, but it is school holiday time and people fluctuations were to be expected. It’s possible that it was just tea or coffee on the menu with a break from the dream interpretation side of things – but I tossed a cheese dream onto the table. I was expecting confirmation that it was a cheese dream and no more.

It appears that cheese dreams don’t exist.

I’m not sure what I expected in terms of dream interpretations. I think I was looking for eyes closed and silent prayer and a particular connection to the heavenlies that I don’t possess. I was waiting for “I think God is saying this…” Instead, they took out notebooks and asked probing questions and drew spider diagrams. They went online to hunt down the meanings of the names of the people in my dream. There were corresponding numbers and related Bible verses to explore. They made interesting connections. It was very different from what I had expected. Very thorough. Significant looks passed between the two of them.

I thought it was all down to my insecurities at work. The dream featured people at work being given slices of my responsibilities leaving me lots of time and nothing to do.  I was being overlooked or passed by, or replaced by someone, who in all honesty I felt knew nothing at all about how to do my job better than I could. In the real world much of what I do has been cut down to a minimum and I often feel like a spare part. I know that “they” said I was indispensable and irreplaceable when “they” denied me voluntary redundancy, but that doesn’t mean that I feel particularly valued at times.

I soon discovered as I answered questions and listened to the conversation between the two ladies that unlocking dreams is not always as obvious as it looks. Even if it is just about my insecurities at work, that gives me something to bring before God to talk through and see His perspective. My ladies were not content with that.

My boss, who in real life is so supportive, in my dream showed little concern about my plight.  After some research on his name and linking in numbers and Bible verses they concluded that he could represent God. We all have expectations about God and how He should act – yes, God is supportive. I have been doing my own research into the faithfulness of God for a poem to be included in the book. God is faithful to His purposes in my life not to my purposes. Times when God wants to push me on to a deeper awareness or intimacy can be uncomfortable times. He has begun something in me and He is determined to see it to completion and doesn’t always get my full cooperation. God not acting the way I expect Him to act is something I know in my head, but don’t always embrace in my heart.

There was no dialogue in my dream just a one sided commentary on how badly I thought I was being treated.  I said things and no one answered. I expressed my sense of betrayal and no one said anything. I thought my sense of betrayal was significant. My dream interpreters thought otherwise. The fact that there had been no dialogue about it meant it might not be that important.

They didn’t come to a settled conclusion about the meaning. They missed the usual crowd and the varied tossing of thoughts into the pot. They agreed that despite the dream storyline there was a very positive message coming out. There are, or have been, new beginnings.  It could be work related, or church related or Mel related. It could be specifically poetry related. They didn’t say hard times are coming, strap yourself in. They did say God will show His grace and mercy. And, of course, I should never doubt that God loves me.

What I really valued about the whole experience was the permission granted to express my fears. Dream interpretation wasn’t something done to me. In the context of trying to figure out what my dream meant there were opportunities to look closely at some aspects of my life, to prod and poke around my psyche in a safe environment. All my “negatives” were balanced out with their “positives”.

So, yes, it may not be just about the dream interpretation but providing that opportunity to really talk and explore the hidden part of ourselves.

Praise and Prison Walls

Last night’s Women Aglow meeting didn’t turn out as planned.  The technology let us down – a DVD to be played from a laptop computer projected into a screen refused to cooperate.  The dummy run before everyone arrived went smoothly but then the laptop and the projector stopped talking to one another.   Who knows what was said in silent cyber speak?  Did the projector hint it would have preferred working with one of the sleek and slim newer models?  Did the laptop say something demeaning about the projector’s size?

My workplace is just around the corner – two corners really, or just over the fence at the back of the hotel for the athletically accomplished.  I offered to fetch a different laptop and rescue the evening.  The entrance foyer was full of small people in judo kits.  On mass they were rather intimidating. It was somewhat disturbing to enter the building and walk out with a laptop unchallenged by any adult.  Of course, I couldn’t have got the laptop without my room key.  Regardless, the projector wouldn’t talk to that one either.

Plan B was an opportunity for people to share testimonies.

I can remember when Saturday mornings used to be sleep-in-affairs, but since I arrived at the other end of the menopause I am wide awake and ready to go. The Saturday just gone I was wide awake at silly o’clock.  Later in the morning there was the faith writing group to look forward to – but that was much later. 

The week had been one where my finest hours were absent.  Maybe I had set the bar too high and banged my legs trying to leap over it, or more likely I’d set it quite low and still managed to bang my legs leaping over.  I was not a happy bunny.

“So, it doesn’t work then?” said God.

“What doesn’t work? I asked.

“The whole praise thing when the prison walls fall.  It really doesn’t work.”

I think God has picked up the habit my husband and I have of starting a conversation in the middle, challenging the perplexed spouse try to work out what it’s all about.

I knew this one.  It all relates to a dream I had years ago.  My dreams are often vivid and colourful.  Many of them are pure nonsense, but sometimes they are profound.

In this particular dream I had been grabbed by demons and dragged into a deep prison. I lifted up my hands and began to sing worship songs. The walls of the prison dissolved before my eyes. The demons grabbed me a second time and dragged me into a deeper prison.  Again I praised God and the walls melted away.  When it happened a third time, I looked into one of the demon’s eyes and spoke so clearly.

“There is no dungeon deep enough, no place you can take me to, where worship cannot bring release.”

I saw fear in the demon’s eyes.

It’s not a dream I have forgotten.  Many years later I wrote a poem based on the story of Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi. 

“So, it doesn’t work then?” said God.

“Actually it does work,” I replied. “The problem isn’t with the truth – it’s with my application of it.”

God nodded.  He and I agreed that it had been a long time since either of us had heard me sing. Too often I look at my circumstances and convince myself I have a good reason not to sing, but in choosing not to worship I make my faith of no value.  How am I any different from someone who doesn’t have my faith? When I set my heart to praise God, particularly when things aren’t going so good, there is always release. The situations I face may not have changed but it no longer imprisons me. 

Freedom is not just for the Pauls and Silas’ in the Christian church but for all of us.

It's All About the Journey

It was a small scene in a much larger dream that has caught my imagination today. 

The larger dream involved driving the car over a patch of sandy ground with lots of marram grass to cut a corner that had a traffic light.  I have seen people on bikes cut corners all the time, but not people in cars!  The car got stuck in sand and I had to get the bus.

I was in Nairn and the last bus to Inverness had long gone.  There was a bus beside the stop and the bus driver leaned out of the window to tell me he was going to Tore on the Black Isle.  For those that know our local area, the geography at this point breaks down.  To get from Nairn to Tore one would have to go through Inverness – but you know what dreams are like.  He told me that there were busses every half hour from Tore to Inverness.

I got on the bus, bought my ticket and sat down.

“So, you are trying to get to Inverness?  There are busses from Tore to Inverness every half hour.”  It was a nice young man standing next to me.  He was repeating basically what the driver had told me.

“You’ll have a half hour wait,” said another passenger.  He was quite a burly chap. “If you visit the Tore Arms bar, you have time to hear my band play.”

“He’s the drummer,” added another voice.

“It’s a rotten band, mind…”

The banter on the bus was really friendly.  It turned out a woman on the bus was in charge of the light buffet and began asking people to do little things for her like collect the paper plates and plastic spoons from the shop.  She also checked whether anyone minded but she was planning the use the spicy recipe for the chicken drumsticks.

A boy on the bus asked if anyone could help him with his homework.

It wasn’t a quiet bus.  No one disappeared behind a newspaper or a book cover.  No one searched for an empty seat all by themselves.  It was a collection of people who knew each other well to the point of teasing one another.

We piled off the bus at Tore, outside the Tore Arms bar.  There was a collection of people milling around outside.  Some of them were the band members with their musical instruments in cases.  They waved to the bus driver as he left.

There was lots of conversation beside the door of the Tore Arms bar.  No one seemed to be in a hurry to set up for the band or sort the buffet.  They stood beside the door and chatted.  It was not a warm night, but with all the people by the door, it felt warm. 

Someone spotted the Inverness bus.  It had a bit of a circuit to do before it came back to the bus stop which wasn’t outside the bar, but a short walk away. 

“We’ll walk you the bus stop,” said the first man that spoke to me.  At some point I had acquired a cat and a seven year old boy.  Someone picked up the cat.  Another man picked up the boy and we all started the journey to the bus stop.

I woke up at this point.  I felt a little bereft.  I wanted my journey to the bus stop.  I wanted to stay in the company of my new found friends.

Before I had even begun to puzzle out some kind of interpretation, those words that instantly came to mind were “It’s all about the journey”.

The word “journey” seems to be tainted with the reality show experience and contestants talking about what they learned along the way or what they will take with them as they get voted out.  This was not like that. 

The friendliness and familiarity of the people on the bus reminded me of my home church.  We are a very small church, but much like a family.  I don’t have my own teenage daughters so I count it a privilege when a young girl tells me about her growing pains.  I sit beside another young girl dissecting poems and counting syllables.

Throughout life there are people who share a part of our journey.  Some walk beside us, or sit on the bus with us, for longer than others.  For some, I think we can make that journey quite unpleasant or a bit of struggle.  Other times, we make the journey a welcoming and comfortable one.  We include rather than exclude people. 

Too often I am the person disappearing behind the newspaper, isolating myself.  By doing so I miss those opportunities to journey beside someone for a while.  The words I could have said to encourage them were never spoken.  We continue to travel in our lonely orbits and that was never God’s intention.  

I time to fold the newspaper and put it away.  It’s time to start telling people about the band at the Tore Arms bar, warn them about the spicy chicken drumsticks and ask them to help us with our homework.

Closing tags

My dreams of late have turned out to be rather interesting. I will be mid-way through a scene when all the various players will simply stop whatever they are doing. It’s a bit like playing a game of statues, stopping mid pose.

A voice will then shout “Closing tags! Closing tags!”

Two minutes later the same voice will shout “Opening tags! Opening tags!” and the scene will move on.

A week ago I started an evening class on an introduction to web design and I have been learning how to write web pages using HTML. There may be web pages already designed and waiting in cyberspace to be filled with interesting content and hyper-linking to other already designed web pages, but we are being taught from scratch. Like most people, what is on my mind comes out in some distorted way in my dreams.

I confess that I don’t know enough to explain what HTML tags are or what they do, only that you need them if you are designing web pages from scratch. They can open and close over a whole document or just one single word and govern what happens in between in terms of colours and fonts and all sorts of interesting features. You can soon tell if your closing tag is missing. The gobbledegook remains on the webpage and your instruction for font colour or the size of the border goes ignored.

To make sure that we don’t forget the closing tag, our instructor insists that we get into the habit of adding in the closing tag straight after the opening one and clicking in the middle part >< of the two tags to add the instructions.

If God used HTML to organise my life I think He would operate in the same way, that His closing tags are already in place and I just haven’t got to them yet.

Here’s nice closing tag to God’s intentions, not just for my life, but for us all. We sang it in church this morning and touched my spirit.

When I stand in that place,
Free at last, meeting face to face,
I am yours, Jesus, You are mine.
Endless joy, perfect peace,
Earthly pain finally will cease.
Celebrate, Jesus is alive,
He's alive!

Questions and Answers

Someone asked me yesterday whether I was going to go and see the Pope. Perhaps if I lived in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or London or Birmingham – those places where he is planning to visit, I might have gone to see him. I suppose there is a sense of it being a historic occasion – coming not in a pastoral role, but as head of state, but as regards my faith, seeing him or not seeing him is not that relevant. Having said that, I watched the BBC’s coverage of the gathering in Glasgow, listening to what he said in his address to the crowd. Not speaking Latin, he lost my attention when it came to conducting mass. I could appreciate that for the tens or hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic Christians, his presence among them was special.

It should not have come as a surprise last night that I dreamt about meeting the Pope. In my dream there was an absence of body guards and there was no list of the highly privileged who could get near to him. He was holding a surgery on spiritual matters, just as a politician would hold a surgery on political matters and it took place in the basement of my local village church. People were encouraged to come and ask questions.

I remember standing in the queue and being aware that I didn’t have a question I wanted to ask. I am not even sure why I was there – just curiosity I suppose, much like you might visit an interesting picture in an art gallery.

Eventually it got to my time. What impressed me about him were his eyes. They were very blue, very clear and bright and full of tenderness. There was an “ask-me-any-question-you-like” quality about them. I felt ashamed that there wasn’t really any burning question I needed to ask – so I made one up. I talked about my father who had recently had a heart attack and how he had come to a full stop in his life. All the things he used to do, like gardening and playing skittles in the pub, he had stopped doing because he was afraid he would bring on another attack. My question was about what I could do to help him regain his courage. The incident was a real one – twenty years ago and I’m not sure then that I thought about how I could help.

I can’t remember what the Pope said. What I remember thinking was “So, you are not infallible after all otherwise you would have known I made up the question and my dad died years ago.”

I don’t really need to look very far to work out why I was asking questions in my dream to a religious authority figure. We have a visitor with our church this weekend. He is our apostle or overseer, responsible for the well being of our church family. We don’t seem him very often as he doesn’t live close by. Sometimes we have the opportunity to deal with what you might class as household issues – practical things about the church. Other times he will share with us what is happening with the other churches he oversees.

There will be a chance to ask him questions. Some friends and I were talking about questions we might like to ask. I am sure you are familiar with the request for any questions being followed by a pin-dropping silence.

I have questions – not so much questions in plural but just one in singular. The trouble is that my question has some strong emotions attached, and I hate getting emotional. Do I really want to weep into a paper tissue as I ask it? Is the answer really that important? Answer “No” to the first and “Yes” to the second.

Why do some of us find it hard to ask questions? Is it that we know everything we need to know right now? Is it that we don’t really want to know what we don’t know? Maybe we feel it’s something we should know and don’t like to reveal our ignorance. Maybe we care too much about what other people might think of us so we stay silent. Or maybe it’s the answer itself that frightens us. I’m swithering between the last two.

I can, of course, live quite well without knowing the answer – but I am sure that I will live a lot better if I did know.

Riot Sheilds and Batons

I had a very interesting dream the other night. I use the word “interesting” rather than “disturbing” because although while I was dreaming it, I felt very disturbed by it, when I woke up there was no overhanging cloud that sometimes comes attached.

Very simply put, I think I turned into a porcupine.

I was aware that scales were appearing on my arms - hard, flat, patches of armour. There was a ridge of scales down the centre of my arm, the kind you see along the backs of dinosaurs. Little black spikes began sprouting everywhere, sharp and straight.

They – not sure who “they” were – took me into an operating theatre to see if they remove the scales or the spikes. They managed to pull out one of the spikes. It was no more painful than pulling out a hair. They stuck it under a microscope and commented to one another that they had never seen anything like it before.

Removing a scale was much more painful, and almost instinctively I hit out, clouting the doctor with an arms-worth of scales and spikes, sending him rocketing across the room and slamming him into a glass cabinet. I think they were making plans to incarcerate me when I woke up.

There was no mystery for me about what the dream was about, although others might find more interesting interpretations.

The holidays have come to an end and it is back to work. My husband often laments to see me heading back to work. The house that had been kept clean gradually deteriorates into a pig-sty. There are no more cooked meals to greet him when he comes home. He cannot rely on lifts right up to the door of his work place. Then of course, there is the appearance of “Work Mel”. She doesn’t get left behind at the end of a tiring day, but seems to clamber into the car and come home with me. You know when she is around – the voice is pitched a little louder, sharper and she is more inclined to nit-pick and harangue.

Sometimes work can be a very intimidating place. Not everyone there is my friend, and I can react in ways that are very defensive. The prickles are very easily provoked – sometimes.

I had been reading Colossians 3:12 - “Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

It didn’t seem to me the most practical advice. I was looking for a riot shield and a baton and Paul was giving me kindness and gentleness.

“You know what, Mel?” said God. “Remember all that stuff about putting on the armour of God? There are times when that is the right thing to do. But supposing you arm yourself mentally with the riot shield and the baton – you are heading into the workplace with the mindset of a warrior in a battlefield. You are expecting to fight. Everyone picks up the vibe that you are armed to the teeth. You have the baton in hand and you are ready to use it. What is their response likely to be? They suddenly drag out their own riot shield and baton to defend themselves. It is kill or be killed. If, however, you were to arrive unarmed – clothed in “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” there is no room for the riot shield and the baton. It is not a doormat mentality where you cease to take authority at all – you just create a different kind of environment to work in. It is far easier to hit someone who is being less than cooperative than it is to show them kindness and patience.”

Some might say that it is just the week-one honeymoon, but they will wear me down eventually. I am not accepting that! I don’t want Work Mel coming home with me. Actually I don’t want Work Mel at all. Work Mel is not who I am, only who I allow the stresses of the workplace to force me to become.

So yes, with God’s help I am clothing myself not with armour but with kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness and patience.

Heaven

“In the vast expanse of a timeless place, Where silence ruled the outer space…” are the opening lines to Carman’s “The Champion”.

When I first moved up to Inverness, I came as part of a gospel outreach team. Someone in the church was into mime, so he choreographed a mime to “The Champion”. It sets the battle of good and evil, Jesus and Satan, in a boxing ring. There’s music in the background and a Charlton Heston-like voice over commentary. I got to be a demon stalking around the stage threateningly, when I would have preferred to be a saint looking pious and holy.

Last night I had a dream in the genre of Carman. It featured the same kind of music in the background, and the voice commentary – given by the actors involved rather than Charlton Heston. It was a church group performing it, in a very small room. It was just early days of a rehearsal. No one really knew their lines – well, the one person that didn’t know their lines was me. I had a whole scene to myself – I was playing God. I was being prompted by the director, who had to virtually recite my lines for me, and have me repeat them after her. She seemed a little bit annoyed that I didn’t know my lines like the rest of the cast. I told her that I was older than the rest of the cast, and that as God I had a lot of lines to learn.

I decided the night of the next rehearsal to ad-lib rather than go with the lines I was supposed to learn. I knew vaguely the main points and the order in which they came. It was a memorable performance. I used all those big words – omniscient, and omnipotent, and I had a Charlton Heston boom. But there was something more than just the words. I was speaking truth to the audience. As I was walking the stage, my spirit was searching for just the right words to say.

It wasn’t a performance, but there were people sitting in the seats. There weren’t many seats, but they were all full. I turned to one person, and as if I were speaking personally as God, I told them that I had been their watching as they were formed in their mother’s womb. Nothing about them was hidden from me. To someone else I told them that there was no one else qualified to sit on the throne of heaven but me. They thought that Satan was an equal adversary, like matched fighters in a boxing ring, that he was qualified to rule – but he wasn’t and would never be. I really wish I could quote line for line, rather than the sense of it. It was spine tingly awesome.

I woke up, most miffed to not be there anymore. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back into my dream. It didn’t happen.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Heaven,” came the reply. “Everyday you need to parade heaven before a watching world, through your words and actions. There is no stage – just your neighbourhood, your workplace, your home. There is no audience – just the people you meet every day. They need to encounter a God that is omnipotent, a God that watched them being formed in their mother’s womb, a God that will not share power and glory with another. They need to see the amazing greatness of God – through you.”

She Dreamed a Dream

I caught the tale end of a documentary on Susan Boyle the other day. I was just in time to see her (and hear her) singing with the West End cast of Les Miserables. For her it was a dream come true – she dreamed a dream and it happened. Later on in the evening I took a look at her Britain’s Got Talent audition on Youtube. As the camera spanned the audience and the judges, there were so many cynical shakes of the head, and whispers that conveyed minds already made up. Elaine Paige? In your dreams, woman! And then she sang, and eyebrows arched upwards, people were on their feet clapping and the judges were wiping away tears. Susan has her CD, her interviews with Oprah, her fans pushing autograph books under her nose and her website! She dreamed a dream.

We were talking dreams yesterday as we sat drinking tea and coffee and eating homemade shortbread biscuits. They were not so much the Susan Boyle dream of what we could become, or do, although later on the conversation did turn towards “projects” or dreams of what we could achieve in 2010.

The conversation was about the sleeping version of dreams and how much God used them as vehicles for sharing His plans. I have to admit that I have had more than my share of dreams whose content could not have been other than God inspired. They have been so down the line, obvious, not veiled in dream symbolism, technicolour messages that only a fool would put them down to too much cheese. There have been a lot of them. There have also been a lot of plain ordinary dreams that make sense at the time of dreaming, but are gobble-de-gook on waking. Then there are those “could be a message” dreams.

I don’t keep a dream diary. If I remember, I remember. If I forget, I forget. I am not sure that God needs to use dreams to get through to me. I love His word and more than often, His words comes up with all that I need – the challenges, the promises, the rebukes and the warnings that seem to feature in dreams. I suppose that I am suspicious of my dreams because I am suspicious of my imagination. Sometimes the line between what is real and what is imagined becomes a bit too fuzzy. Does that mean I am on the brink of insanity? Possibly! If it’s in black and white and written on the pages of the Bible, it’s something that I can trust – if it’s in pictures in my head, it’s not necessarily something that I can trust.

That doesn’t mean that it is something that I can just cast aside either. Take the other night. There was a short scene, in amongst a lot of other stuff, of myself and my church leader. He didn’t say the actual words “You are a waste of space, Mel,” although he might have done. (On reporting this to the rest of the company there was distinct agreement that he wouldn’t say that – not, I have to say, that he would have no cause to say that!) On waking, I remembered the words “You are a waste of space, Mel,” and I (a) didn’t wonder if he really would have said it or not, (b) didn’t really wonder if this was a God-inspired dream or not but (c) agree that although a waste of space was a bit harsh, it wasn’t entirely unfounded!

I can think of a myriad ways in which I serve God, or have served Him in the past. I don’t warm a pew. BUT..I may not be making the most of the gifts that God has given me. Like the first and the second servants in the parable of the Talents, I am working, but like the third servant, it’s possible that I have buried stuff too – worried that I might fritter it away and have nothing to show for it.

The chapbook that I produced for the November Poem a Day challenge, which I haven’t submitted yet, because I am not sure if it is a chapbook – whatever it is that I have made, this little book of a dozen or so poems really has thrilled me. These are my poems, written, printed, folded over, with a cover, in a little book – I no longer doubt that I have talent. I no longer doubt that the talent comes from God. I am beginning to believe that the talent is not for playing with.

So, when it came to talking about ”projects” for 2010 – mine is poetry and publishing inspired. I am not setting dates and deadlines…I am making no covenants or vows…although yesterday’s reading from Psalm 76 did mention that at the end. I have just moved the pan off the back burner, and turned up the heat a little!

Dreaming Big Dreams

If I thought my dolphins and sharks dream was revelational – to me at least – last night’s dream was a real blast! I am still reeling from it!

It had the unique distinction of being a morning dream! I had woken up at seven, thought about getting up, decided not to and fell back to sleep.

The dream took place in an unfamiliar church and there wasn’t anyone I knew. I was a visitor.

Let me back track a little. As well as the talk about dreams at the mid-week meeting I had been contemplating the story of Paul’s conversion. God had firmly told Ananias to go to Paul and lay is hands on him and “release” him into the ministry that God had prepared for him. Ananias had no concerns about whether he had heard God correctly, or felt worthy enough to do the task – the kind of things that hold us back. His concern was with whether Paul was perhaps worthy of the gift about to be bestowed. Well, he did it. He went, found Paul, laid his hands on him and released him into what God had for him to do. It’s all very well God giving people dreams – Paul had a dream that he believed was God given – annihilating the early church. It took Ananias to be the instrument whereby God directed and channelled the gifts Paul had been given.

So back to the dream. Thinking about Ananias and laying hands on people to release them into what God want for them – there was a man in my dream. He had dark brown hair. I could probably identify him from a police line up. I felt a stirring to lay my hand on his shoulder and pray for him, but because I was a visitor, I didn’t have the confidence to do so.

It was the end of the meeting and he was about to leave the building and something stirred in me and I shouted to him to stop because God wanted to do something. He turned around. I was mortified to discover I had got the wrong person. I had made a mistake and stopped the wrong person.

He came over to me. I could see that he was much smaller than the person I was supposed to talk to and much younger. He stood in front of me expectantly. I was hunting around for words to tell him that he wasn’t the man and he must have misinterpreted my silence.

“I know what this about,” he said. Well, he certainly knew more than I did at that point. We walked over to the stage and sat down. He confided in me that he had been struggling lately. He was the picture of the successful Christian but deep down he saw it all as a smokescreen. He was “working hard” at being a Christian, but he knew that he didn’t really have a faith. He knew that he had never asked God to be lord of his life and he was scared to do so because he thought he would fail.

I can’t remember what I said. I know that what ever it was, God used it to speak to the man. I rested my hand on his shoulder and assured him that it was not his problem but God’s. God would make Himself responsible for the man’s faith and growth.

There were tears streaming down his face and he didn’t pray any words out loud, but he opened his heart to Jesus. He face was flooded with joy and he crumpled to the ground. I don’t know whether this church was used to seeing people slain in the Spirit, but a number of people came to look at what was happening.

I was beside him, still with my hand on his shoulder. I was about to launch into some great releasing prophecy over him when he touched my hand and said, “No more words. All that needs to be said has been spoken.”

He got up and we both went for a cup of tea. Pathetic ending I know, but that’s how it ended!

I woke up and the first words to come to my mind were “Which church, God? Which church will I meet this man?”

See, one of the things about moving in the gifts of the Spirit is that you have got to move! There is no point about having a stirring dream if all it does is stir and there is no action. It is not by accident that our own church has shifted its meetings to an evening for a while, leaving me free to roam around a few other churches – to visit. Yeah, the plan had actually been to enjoy a morning lie in, but that may be not God’s plan.

I looked through the adverts for churches in the local paper later on in the morning. I was looking for something to kind of leap of the page. Nothing! I am not even sure that the man of dreams will be there, but obedience has got to start somewhere, right? If he is there will I step out and have a go? It is all a bit out of my comfort zone and part of me is scanning the landscape for a bolt hole!

Be that "me"

I had a very stirring dream last night. It was a Sunday morning and I was leading worship. It was worship such as I don’t think I have ever experienced in the real world. It was incredibly dynamic and powerful. Although there was familiar songs coming up on the screen, and the keyboard players were people that I knew – there was a kind of reckless indulgence in God. We just knew that we were there not to sings songs that flowed, but that we were there to worship God and to usher in His presence.

There were lots of familiar faces and lots of unfamiliar ones too. One of the unfamiliar faces was an older woman sitting on the front row. As we worshipped, the Holy Spirit moved powerfully and she was just knocked off her feet.

Some of the familiar faces were people who had moved to another church in the city a number of years ago. Although we keep in touch, the connection is always tenuous and never the spiritual bond it used to be. Part way through this meeting, one of these people, a man, started to sing prophetically. I can’t remember any of the words of the song just that it was powerful stuff. It felt like we were enacting the passage in Corinthians that relates to worship – everyone coming with something to share.

At the end of the meeting, a rota sheet was being circulated among the worship team. Included among the names were some of the moved-away crowd.

I woke up. I was still there for a while, surrounded by a group of people simply focused on God. I could sense that all those thoughts like “What will people think if I say this?” or “Have I really got this right?” were just put aside. Honouring God was at the forefront of our hearts and minds. I thought about church unity and although to some extent I can understand how different denominations have grown out of one body of people – it just seemed so sad. It is sad that many people, myself included, are unwilling to dismantle differences. People leave one church to go to another and take with them grievances and hurts. People will always get hurt by other people, but sometimes those hurts become the directing force in our lives. God takes second place to our comfort.

The biggest thing though about the dream was the sense of shame that it provoked. There was a corporate shame in the church being so disunited – but there was also a personal shame involved for me. That kind of worship meeting should be a reality and not a dream. I should be an every Sunday experience – not a once in a while, or a Spring Harvest occasion – but every Sunday. Why limit it to a Sunday? Every encounter with God should be dynamic and powerful – and yet, speaking personally, my encounters with God are pale in comparison.

It’s more than whether I am prepared on a Sunday to bring my contribution. Whether I lead worship or not, I still participate. I think it is about where, not just one a Sunday, but every single moment of every day, God is placed in my life.

I am ashamed to admit that too often I am at the centre of everything I do. If I do something, it’s because I want to do it, or I enjoy doing it, or I get something out if it. I am ashamed that my heart is a lot cooler than I realised.

The “me” I saw in the dream was simply sold out for God and making the assumption that everyone else was just as sold out as I was. The “me” in the dream was not “me-conscious” but totally God conscious. The “me” in the dream was not hesitant or cautious but out on a limb. I liked the “me” in the dream.

I think that all God has got to say on the subject is “Be that ‘me’!”

A Sense of Wonder

This is just a snatch from my dream last night – not the whole thing. I am not sure that I remember much of the whole thing but this one scene caught my interest.

It was one of those rare dreams in the third person. It was like watching a movie rather than being personally involved – although if you are anything like me, you do get involved in movies!

The scene was a furniture shop. Around the walls there were cupboards – the kind that you would build into the walls of the home. One of them was made to look like something you would find in a Victorian home, perhaps in a sewing room. There were lots of drawers of various sizes. In some of the drawers, for display purposes, there were rolls of material for making dresses, and there were smaller drawers with ribbons in, and buttons of various kinds. One drawer contained a pair of scissors on a pile of lace.

The shop assistant called over a young girl and showed her the drawer with the scissors in it and told her it was a magic drawer. Things put in this drawer would sometimes disappear. To demonstrate what he meant, he opened the drawer to show the girl the scissors, and then shut it. Maybe he tapped lightly on the drawer, or blew on it like magicians do. When he opened the drawer, the lace was still there but the scissors had gone. The little girl looked really wide eyed.

The main character in my dream was a very pushy woman. She marched over to the cupboard and told the assistant not to be so silly. It wasn’t a magic drawer and there was a very simple explanation. She opened the drawer to reveal the scissors, and then pushed her finger down the side of the drawer. There was a small hook, or button, and a small eye on the side of the drawer. She hooked the eye on the button, closed the drawer, and when she opened the drawer, the scissors had disappeared. It wasn’t magic, just a clever devise to hide the drawer.

Suddenly, the woman’s face changed and she burst into tears. She was distraught – not about finding that the drawer worked by a clever devise, but on realising how determined she had been to find the devise. She had dismissed outright the idea that it could be magic and sought straight away to find the “truth”. She realised that she had lost her sense of wonder. Everything, it seemed, could and should be explained away.

I woke up with tears on my face! How sad that there are some people – not even grown ups – that need to have everything explained. There is no sense of the miraculous. What they can’t see doesn’t exist. I sometimes wonder if my own sense of wonder is being eroded away by the science and reason of the world I inhabit. Then I spend time in worship before God, and it is restored!

Many years ago, when I was attending a creative writing course at college, one of the assignments was to re-write the lyrics to “Raindrops on Roses”….”My Favourite Things” from “The Sound of Music” I thought I would do the opposite – and write about the things that I really didn’t ‘like. Here is one of the verses that came to mind this morning.

Science unlocking the secrets around me
Mysteries solved nothing left to astound me
Looking at stars and not being impressed
These are some things that I really detest.