Whoo, here's a fun one. Last night (in a dream, obviously) I was in an office with three other people, discussing some kind of business plan, and the girl sitting in a chair on the other side of the room-- who turned out to be me, she had my face-- suddenly started convulsing and throwing up blood. I started yelling for somebody to help her, to call 911, but the others just kept calmly discussing the business plan. Meanwhile her face was turning a sickly grayish white, and she was clearly losing consciousness. I guess it never occurred to me to walk over and try to help her myself, I just kept watching in horror.

Somewhere in here, before the office setting, I was in a mythology class, and one of my old college professors mentioned the muse Urania (Muse of astronomy/ natural sciences), who once struck someone in the skull with lightning for asking for too much truth in too pure a form. (Incidentally, I'm pretty sure this isn't a real story, even as the Greeks told it; I must have conflated her with one of the Greek Gods-- Zeus, Kronos?-- whose mortal lover asked to "see him in his full glory" and was burned alive by his presence when he took off his mortal mask. Also relevant to the dream, I think.) But as he was telling us this story, I could smell smoke in the room. I strongly suspect that was the 'severe head injury' this girl/I had suffered: she'd just been struck by some kind of overintense truth-lightning.

So I just looked up Urania, and it turns out she's also been associated with the Holy Spirit, which is interesting. "'Universal Love' and the Holy Spirit." To me, this is clearly something my subconscious dragged up while I've been struggling with a revisitation to Christianity... trying to work through all my old theological conflicts, particularly the idea of an intermediary between God and the individual. I wonder if some part of me deep down is already convinced, as the church fathers have taught, that direct access to God would more than we mortals could handle... thus the necessity of an Incarnation. 

But even in the wake of that smoke, my conscious brain still wants to know: If really Jesus, then, why not really the rest of us? How was that Incarnation truly different from each miraculous one of us- and if he is/was different, then what kind of authority does his difference give him? if any?

Unfortunately, all these questions ever seem to do is lead me back to the texts that still make my teeth and my stomach clench every time I open them up. But I can't imagine that keeping them closed, and leaving the questions unanswered, would make the clench any better. I think 2011 is going to be a time of hard work, honesty, and the shineless fruits of unglorious labor... the kind that are genuinely nourishing... but don't always taste the way we hoped they would.

Truly the worst dreams for me are the ones where someone I have cared deeply about, but who has died, is somehow re-animated, and clearly all wrong. People who have really recently died will be walking around a corner and I won't be able to catch their eye; others who have been gone a little longer, but whose loss I am still really feeling, will be in this horrible not quite right state and I can never figure out how to make things right. Sometimes I'm not sure in the dream whether they've actually died, or if something is just really wrong that I can't put my finger on. Now and then I have this with my family's dog who died several years ago: I'm supposed to be taking care of her, or she's lost, or everything is supposedly fine with her but she isn't like herself at all. Most of the time everybody else thinks she's fine, but I know she's not. Last night it was my high school girlfriend's mom, who died several months ago now. She was in the background of a dream about my ex suddenly taking my arm to waltz with me in her family's living room. Her dad had been watching birds out the back window, and turned around and smiled. "I wasn't sure about you two for the longest time," he said, welcoming me into the family. I told him I hadn't been so sure myself. (She's married now, so this was all pretty ridiculous/ irrelevant.) But the person I really wanted to talk to was my ex's mom, who would know what to do, would be able to figure out what the situation really was, and whose voice would just be really nice to hear. It would've been nice just to see her face, if she would just look up from the vaccuming. But she wouldn't. So I kissed my ex halfheartedly and tried to smile at her dad, hoping for the best.

A couple of weeks ago I also had one with my grandparents, my mom's parents who I don't usually dream about, certainly not together. They've both been gone for some time now, my grandpa more recently. In the dream they were both at their old house, and I was there visiting them by myself (which I never did, my parents were always with me). We had some laughs playing board games, and they were both happy and excited for me that I was going back to church again (which I'm not particularly). I started to say something about things being more complex than that, but they just kept saying how happy they were that I was. Something about me being a minister, even. It was nice to see them both smiling and having fun together... although, even then, it was never quite right. My grandma was much younger, maybe in her sixties, and looked so much healthier, which was good to see.