This dream is from 3 or 4 days ago. I recounted it to Riz Rinker when I went over for a chat earlier this week. Thankfully, I remember enough to write it down.
I had a series of dreams throughout the night, tied together by a recurring theme of justification and eternal judgment. The segment I remember best is right at the end. My mind created an anecdotal conclusion to make sense of the night's events in the form of a stick-figure comic strip.
Maybe later, I'll update this post with a depiction of what I saw. For now, I a written explanation will have to suffice:
The Stick Figure Comic Strip
In the first pane, a religious scholar approaches the gates of heaven and is stopped by St. Peter.In the second frame, Peter asks the man, "What beliefs did you adhere to during your visit to Earth?"
The man adjusts his glasses in the third frame and offers a laundry dogmatic list of tenants and what-have-you regarding his belief system. i.e., All Orthodox Jews are silly for limiting their steps on the Sabbath, Muslims are dummies for praying 5x a day, Mormons are close-minded, gay-hating radicals, etc. Peter listens carefully while occasionally configuring the man's settings for Heaven beyond the gate.
"Thank you for the stalwart adherence to your beliefs. You may enter Heaven."
The subsequent frame provides a close-up of the man's eyes; they are wide spirals as he surveys his "Heavenly surroundings." Everything that he believed in on earth was opposite in his Heaven. The man runs screaming down a road paved in gold as he attempts to avoid contact with the sacrilege that surrounds him.
Moments later outside the gate, another man approaches St. Peter...
"What did you believe in?" Peter solicits.
"I always thought it was important for all doors to be light beige in color." The second man replies.
"Very good," says Peter. "You may enter your Heaven."
The man passes through the gates only to find a hillside covered in red doors. The man stands there, momentarily expressionless, and then gives a little shrug and skips happily into the meadow.
That's it. That's the dream.
The Analysis
I have no idea what this could mean.Here are a few random possible resources that I may have pulled ideas from:
- This month (February) is Black History Month and race, symbolic color, and values systems are frequent topics of conversation.
- My sister Stef is in Jerusalem right now and I'm worried about her.
- I heard a rumor that gay activists might be organizing a giant demonstration in SLC over General Conference weekend this April.
- I've recently been reflecting on my two-year mission experience in Colorado. I remember wondering which approach was more powerful for sharing the Restored Gospel of Christ: 1) Boldy declaring true doctrine by virtue of the Word of God or 2) simply but lovingly sharing my beliefs through personal testimony. As I look at the babies [read: Missionaries] being sent across the world from the MTC, I wonder how I could have ever wondered about the answer to that question. I was one of those self-righteous, Bible-toting young men and women in the posture of saving souls from lives of sorrow and degradation. I was barely separated from my mother's cords. I probably seemed annoying and pretentious, pretending to "know about the world." I currently feel the best missionary approach is to follow the Savior's example and love and respect people for who they are, yet teach with authority.
I once had a dream about the second coming, in which all the salvation-hopefuls were brought into a large auditorium and made to fill out forms in triplicate (including information like date of birth, ethnicity, etc.) and then released with instructions to wait until we were contacted.
ReplyDeleteYour dream sounds like the set up of one of Rick's jokes.
ReplyDeleteWhat I loved was the shirt? Could you get me one??
ReplyDeleteHaha, yay, I made it into a blog.
ReplyDeleteAlso, one of my dad's employees in Guatemala had that quote from the t shirt hanging in her office.
I loved the T-shirt too!
ReplyDelete