A few weeks ago I dreamt about a country church.
The Country Church Dream
At first I was inside the church, waiting for a friend in a sort of reception area and then I walked out into the parking lot. The landscape was open and flat, mostly fields with a bit of forest to my right. In the distance there was a pay phone. The phone rang, than stopped. A pickup truck emerged from the wooded area and a man hopped out to get his mail. It was peaceful and quiet.
Wandering back into the small wooden church, I saw that a small group of people were decorating the reception area as if for a holiday. There was a sort of stage and some kind of tapestry but I don't remember anything else about the decorations. The group included the pastor of the church and a few women, one of whom was a new convert with a background in the New Age.
Somehow I understood that the Church was Methodist and I asked the new convert what kind of Methodist. She told me it was Free Methodist and I told her about my grandmother and her love for the Free Methodist Church.
When the group was done working, the waiting area was spotless. There was a single hard backed chair facing the stage and wide old wood floors. Aside from the stage the room was sparsely furnished and plain. I could tell it was 1800s construction.
On the other side of the reception area was a big room where a dinner was being served. There were a long serving tables against the walls and trestle tables where people sat eating. Women were dishing up food to the crowd. People were talking and laughing. Everything was old-fashioned and inviting. I joined the group. And that is where the dream, or my memory of the dream, ended.
I thought about the Free Methodist Church later that day. I had never gone there with my grandmother that I remember and her funeral, which I attended at the age of 12, is a blur. Once in High School, I attend Free Methodist services with a friend. I had a good experience there but did not go back.
The Discovery
I did vaguely remember someone in my family saying that "everyone" on my grandfather's side of the family were Free Methodist ministers so last night I decided to do a little research. As it turns out, "everyone" means five out of seven sons in my great-grandfather's family, as pictured above. My great-grandfather, is the tall guy 5th from the left. In the second photo (below) he is the tall guy again, holding his Bible high and tight.
While I have pursued a variety of religions and beliefs over the course of my life, Christianity has surfaced repeatedly over wide cycles of time. Growing up in completely secular family, I loved the Bible my grandmother gave me as a little girl (more on that here) and turned to it again and again over the course of my life. No one else in my family had that interest, that I knew of, except for my grandmother.
UPDATE JANUARY 2024
Based on this dream I took a sabbatical from the blog and explored various Christian denominations. This is something I discuss in my memoir, The Spirit Dream. I do not consider this time wasted but when I returned to the blog in 2024 my perspective had shifted.
I am now interested in dreamwork, Jungian psychology, parapsychology, and have even returned to tarot. I hope this will be of interest!
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” - Matthew 22:35-40 (ESV)
Reading about love is easy. But what about when loving other people is a challenge?
Taking Criticism
When I got this comment on my personal, but public, Facebook page I have to admit that I did not feel a whole lot of love.
I find this "let's give up all our knowledge and self awareness and throw our brains away to Jesus really sad, it is like you gave up and got brainwashed. How very sad for you and all the people who read your books and your tarot work especially. I am only saying what many on this page must be seriously thinking... No one deserves to throw away a life's work which has so beautifully helped people just because some born again brainwashed people believe so...
As I read this post, my heart took off a mile a minute, just the way it did in High School or Middle School or Grade School when I knew people were talking. And it seemed so unfair.
I knew that I wasn't brainwashed and that it was critical thinking NOT blind faith that had led me to Jesus. And I had never, ever said that any New Age person was evil. As a matter of fact, I had gone out of my way to say that most New Agers were sincere spiritual seekers who had got things wrong. As I had.
That reaction surprised me, but I set it aside and wrote a fair and reasonable reply. Some of the things she said in return were hurtful. But I was okay with that I didn't really know the poster, after all, except through Facebook. But I knew that in one regard she was right - other people were probably making some of the same assumptions she was.
Praying Anyway
And so, feeling in need of some support, I posted on my experience in a Christian support group I belong to. Most of the feedback I received was helpful. But one suggestion in particular stood out. It recommended a prayer: Lord Jesus, allow me to see them with Your eyes and love them with Your heart.
So that night prayed for S and made my best attempt to see her and love her in the same way that Jesus would. But I really wasn't able to. So I prayed to be able to see her, and others who have hurt me, through His eyes.
The next morning I woke up before my alarm and started praying for S again and then, for some reason, I started thinking about my father, who I have forgiven but never really felt true forgiveness for. I remember thinking about how I never talk about him to my kids - or anyone. Then I heard that still, small inner voice that comes to me now and then during prayer say, "he never talked about his father either."
I realized that I had never really thought of that before, and somehow laying there with the morning sun drifting in above the air-conditioned it seemed like a revelation.
Then, out of nowhere a powerful and very unusual feeling came over me.
My Experience of Spirit
What I felt over those next few minutes was so beautiful and so pure that there was an actual sensation to it - a feeling that feel somewhere between the rush of love you feel when a child is born and the tingle that comes at the end of a really touching movie. It was exquisite and beautiful and sad.
The feeling was so profoundly compassionate that my eyes filled, but at the same time so inexplicably blissful that I wanted to stay in that place forever. I have never, ever felt anything like it. But I believe that it was an answer to my prayer. And I believe that is how Jesus sees each and every one of us.
When the feeling finally faded it occurred to me that this was the experience that put everything else into perspective, all the way back to childhood. And what I am left with has changed me. Because I know that if God can feel compassion for members of my family, He can feel compassion for me.
And for all of us.
The Facebook Message
UPDATE 2024: Looking at this post over time, I feel that in some ways the original poster was right. I rebounded from the New Age and did get too caught up in evangelical judginess about what other people were doing and thinking.But the experience that came out of it was good. And probably more than I deserved. Which, when it comes to God, is always the case.
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