A Dream

How truthful are dreams, I wonder? How much are they flattery, and how much are they our waking selves, writ small?

I dreamed last night I was in a war; I believe it was the WWII. Somehow, I’d been drafted, and I was being shipped to an army camp of some sort. After a while, I looked down at the rifle in my hands, puzzled.

“Wait–” I thought. “This can’t be right. I’m a Quaker. I don’t fight.”

And they came and they gathered up those of us who said we wouldn’t fight, and told us to stand in a circle in the middle of the troop of soldiers, and they trained their guns on us, and asked us if we still insisted that we could not fight, and we said yes.

I didn’t think they would actually kill us–I thought there was some rule, even in my dream, that Quakers did not have to fight–but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t very afraid, and I didn’t want to die, but it seemed possible.

And then the soldiers fired at us, but they fired blanks, and then took away our guns, and we didn’t have to fight. And I felt so peaceful, so good: the way I felt on the first morning of summer vacation when I was young.

A little later in the dream I was doing stand-up comedy to promote glbtq rights, with fellow-blogger Mike Shell. We were working on a routine around the Bible, and having a lot of fun.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the sequence was its lack of drama. At times I was confused, or worried. But mostly, it was a peaceful, centered state of mind I found within myself.

It was a very peaceful, contented dream.