AN INTERESTING DREAM

I don't typically get revelatory dreams like this, if this is what it is. Most of my dreams are usually some kind of spiritually dark "invasions" when I sense there are significant spiritual implications to the dreams.

I'm running along a variety of trails and paths with some "creatures," the type of which I wasn't initially sure. I couldn't tell if we were running FROM or TO something, but it became apparent we were running together. At some point, we were running up rocky crags and through precarious cliffs. I noticed along the way that I was running with sheep.

Suddenly we came across a fence corner, where two fence lines came together. Being the human, I knew I was going to have to climb the fence to keep going, but I wondered about the sheep; how were they going to get across?

I climbed and landed on the other side and found myself on the ground. As soon as I did, a blanket of thick and total and complete darkness fell. The darkeness was absolute, like what I'd done before for caving groups in the deepest recesses of a cave when we'd all turn out our lights and plunge into total darkness. Only, in the dream, it was a darkness that had a weight.....or, for lack of a better word- intention.

The darkness was so instantaneous and so thick, that I mused in my dream that I couldn't believe this had just happened. So, I was able to "rewind" in my dream to see if it would happen again. And it did.

It was Halloween (yesterday) when I dreamed this. This is significant not because of the date, but because the Aidan readings (Celtic Daily Prayer) for October 31st, especially the one from Psalm 119:169-176:

169 May my cry come before you, O LORD;
give me understanding according to your word.

170 May my supplication come before you;
deliver me according to your promise.

171 May my lips overflow with praise,
for you teach me your decrees.

172 May my tongue sing of your word,
for all your commands are righteous.

173 May your hand be ready to help me,
for I have chosen your precepts.

174 I long for your salvation, O LORD,
and your law is my delight.

175 Let me live that I may praise you,
and may your laws sustain me.

176 I have strayed like a lost sheep.
Seek your servant,
for I have not forgotten your commands.

I am, like the hymn writer of old, prone to wander. I am not above that, if I am to discern how much of this is for me and how much of it pertains to those for whom God has entrusted to me. Naturally, I'll incorporate 100% of this into my being and own it's encouragement for my own edification. That has to happen before this means anything to anyone outside of myself. And it may never.

In the reading, a prayer by Peter Marshall has now become one of my own in this season of my life:

Father, I know now, if I never knew it before, that only in You can my restless human heart find any peace. For I began life without knowledge but full of needs. And the turmoil of my mind, the dissatisfaction of my life all stem from trying to met those needs with wrong things and in the wrong places.

God remains at the edges and boundaries of my waywardness, seeking me, staying me, finding me and loving me and feeding me deeply. Oh, to stay in that...to rest in that, devoid of the illusions of my own strength that impale the works of the Spirit.