Why, you're soaking in it
Dec. 27th, 2005 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaA strange dream just before waking has stayed with me all day.
I was supervising some new hires at a company I used to work for. One man, an Arab and a Muslim (somehow I knew this for sure, in the dream), was supposed to fill in the info for six houses that were on our list--things like who lives there, how long they've lived there, the appraised value of the house, and that sort of thing--using a View-Master kind of device. I told him that he should put six per page. For some reason I stood around to watch him number the list. Instead of dividing and numbering the page like this:
1--2------------------1--4
3--4-------or-this:---2--5--(dashes needed to get the format right)
5--6------------------3--6
he did it more like the 5-dice zigzag.
1-6
5-2
3-4
"Glad I watched you so I'd know how you numbered that," I remarked in the dream.
He looked up, surprised. "Why wouldn't I do it that way? This is the normal way." He went on to explain that the 1 was in the Heaven position, and out of respect the 2 moves catty-corner down, and so forth, some esoteric explanation that I don't remember now. What I do remember is thinking, in the context of the dream, "This is why you have to question your assumptions all the time--and why you must remember that other cultures and their people have different basic assumptions; their assumptions work for them because they all understand them and know what to expect. To him, that is the default way."
(Realize that I don't even KNOW any Muslims or any Arabic men at the moment, and I don't think this represents their normal way. This is just the symbolism that came out of this dream.)
You know how dreams do a film-type dissolve cut to the next scene? That's what happened.
Later, I was standing in front of a window looking out at a big black sea roiling as if we were in some kind of aquarium with one star above. The star said, "One GOD, many children."
I asked the star, which was an angel, "Who is right? Do we worship God correctly?"
The angel replied, "I am only God's messenger. Just worship Him. And thank Him."
The implication being not that the angel didn't know or didn't want to say, but that this was not the message the angel was sent to give, and since they are only messengers, they don't add to or embellish on the message they're bringing us on this side of the veil.
For some reason, this dream gave me hope. I don't know whether it was sparked by a discussion I had with someone a few days ago about "the hope for the unsaved" and about Romans 5 and how we are told that those who never hear the Good News can still see God and can worship Him in spirit and in truth, and a discussion I had with my mother after she watched that Baba-Wawa special on TV about Heaven the other day (she said that she had always believed that although there's no mention of it anywhere, that God will give everyone a last chance at the moment of death or just after, a chance to choose to go toward the light and be saved, because just as we don't throw away our children or pets, neither does God throw away His creations . . . I think she's right, and I think the important thing to remember here is, "Go toward the light!!") Or maybe it was just the archetypes breaking through. Or a psychotic break. Whatever it was, I thought it was pretty cool. Much better than the usual one about wandering through a huge complex of halls and classrooms and labs and cubicle farms trying to find the exit and/or my shoes.
I was supervising some new hires at a company I used to work for. One man, an Arab and a Muslim (somehow I knew this for sure, in the dream), was supposed to fill in the info for six houses that were on our list--things like who lives there, how long they've lived there, the appraised value of the house, and that sort of thing--using a View-Master kind of device. I told him that he should put six per page. For some reason I stood around to watch him number the list. Instead of dividing and numbering the page like this:
1--2------------------1--4
3--4-------or-this:---2--5--(dashes needed to get the format right)
5--6------------------3--6
he did it more like the 5-dice zigzag.
1-6
5-2
3-4
"Glad I watched you so I'd know how you numbered that," I remarked in the dream.
He looked up, surprised. "Why wouldn't I do it that way? This is the normal way." He went on to explain that the 1 was in the Heaven position, and out of respect the 2 moves catty-corner down, and so forth, some esoteric explanation that I don't remember now. What I do remember is thinking, in the context of the dream, "This is why you have to question your assumptions all the time--and why you must remember that other cultures and their people have different basic assumptions; their assumptions work for them because they all understand them and know what to expect. To him, that is the default way."
(Realize that I don't even KNOW any Muslims or any Arabic men at the moment, and I don't think this represents their normal way. This is just the symbolism that came out of this dream.)
You know how dreams do a film-type dissolve cut to the next scene? That's what happened.
Later, I was standing in front of a window looking out at a big black sea roiling as if we were in some kind of aquarium with one star above. The star said, "One GOD, many children."
I asked the star, which was an angel, "Who is right? Do we worship God correctly?"
The angel replied, "I am only God's messenger. Just worship Him. And thank Him."
The implication being not that the angel didn't know or didn't want to say, but that this was not the message the angel was sent to give, and since they are only messengers, they don't add to or embellish on the message they're bringing us on this side of the veil.
For some reason, this dream gave me hope. I don't know whether it was sparked by a discussion I had with someone a few days ago about "the hope for the unsaved" and about Romans 5 and how we are told that those who never hear the Good News can still see God and can worship Him in spirit and in truth, and a discussion I had with my mother after she watched that Baba-Wawa special on TV about Heaven the other day (she said that she had always believed that although there's no mention of it anywhere, that God will give everyone a last chance at the moment of death or just after, a chance to choose to go toward the light and be saved, because just as we don't throw away our children or pets, neither does God throw away His creations . . . I think she's right, and I think the important thing to remember here is, "Go toward the light!!") Or maybe it was just the archetypes breaking through. Or a psychotic break. Whatever it was, I thought it was pretty cool. Much better than the usual one about wandering through a huge complex of halls and classrooms and labs and cubicle farms trying to find the exit and/or my shoes.
