Not For Reading
Nonsensical Babble Not For Reading
This has been an interesting wake-up morning and continues so. For starters, four-thirty is late, my usual wake up is about three to three-fifteen, though recently I’ve been trying to train my bathroom habit -- OK, WTH, bladder -- to wake me soon after midnight so as to go back to sleep and maybe sleep till five, a sheer luxury that has actually happened once or twice since I started trying this. In fact, Sunday morning I slept until five-thirty, which would have been nearly disastrous on a Sunday morning if it had been my Sunday to preach the sermon.
This morning’s wake up was to an anxiety dream, hot and sweaty and tangled in the sheets and blanket and pillows. My anxiety dreams are always one of two types. I’ve been called to active duty as a Navy officer. It’s a huge ship, usually an aircraft carrier, and having just reported aboard, I can’t find my way around. When I find my way to my stateroom my uniform is all goofed up and I can’t find my hat. When I do find it, it doesn’t have scrambled eggs like it’s supposed to, so I’m out of uniform. Word is passed over the 1MC that I’m to report to the admiral’s cabin. I start putting on my uniform. My collar devices are the wrong rank, and this khaki shirt isn’t supposed to be worn with this Navy blue coat but my shoulder boards for the khaki coat have the wrong rank and corps device and don’t match the shirt collar markings, and I can’t find a white shirt. And I don’t know whether I’ve been recalled as a line officer, or Supply Corps, or as a chaplain. I’m thinking probably chaplain and the admiral wants to discuss the spiritual life of the ships in the carrier group, but I don’t have a cross to pin on my left collar. Or was it the right collar. No right was rank, rank on right, easy onomatopoeia for remembering. Word is passed again. Where’s that blasted hat? Out the door without hat and with the wrong uniform and wrong rank on the sleeves. Or was I called to active duty at lower rank because they made me a chaplain? Word is passed again this time it says report to the admiral’s cabin on the double. I have no idea which way to go or which passageway to take, I only know that the admiral’s cabin is probably “up”. Sailors I pass turn and stare at this strangely clad out of uniform naval officer as I rush by. It’s literally a trip through hell until I wake up in a sweat and realizing it was a dream and I’m safe in my real bed, wide awake relieved. On the double comes over the 1MC again. And this khaki p-cutter hat doesn’t go with this Navy blue coat. On the double.
In the other anxiety dream I’m preaching at one of my old churches that I’ve served. This morning it was Mount Calvary Episcopal Church, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania and some bishop has been set aside, his preaching invitation cancelled so that I can preach the sermon, and that bishop is in the congregation. Huge crowd in the outdoor amphitheater style church. They’re reading the first lesson and where the aitch is my vestment? Oh, well, put on my Navy ensign uniform, that’ll look fine. They’re singing the hymn before the gospel, how do I get to the blasted pulpit? OMG, I forgot to prepare a sermon, write notes on tiny scraps of yellow paper. Get in the pulpit. Wrong pulpit, have to go to the pulpit on the other side of the amphitheater while people watch and wait and stare at this priest in a Navy ensign’s uniform. Drop my scraps of paper, OMG, I forgot to write page numbers on them. Make jokes as I try to get the yellow scraps of paper in the right order, but nobody chuckling, just staring. Kristen very small comes up and wants to be held while I spread the scrap out and decide I’ll just have to do an extemporaneous sermon, because my writing is too small to read.
Though I don't understand the authority figure common to my anxiety dreams, the dream itself I recognize as ongoing mental fallout from a recent class that went off course and into the brambles, stirred with unending personal and obviously national obsession with the Boston bombing and anxiety about the teenage bomber who could be a beloved grandson; and frustration with shouts from a U.S. senator wanting to run the Executive Branch and classify the boy as an enemy combatant instead of treating him as an American citizen. And the senator himself a bad dream.
Time for heart meds and get my stuff together for this morning’s class about Revelation with scorpions the size of horses stinging people for six months but not killing because death would be too merciful.
And this morning’s TV news, ongoing nightmare: questioning the boy without reading Miranda. Legally he's an adult, but morally he's a child. People are shouting for his execution; but in a civilized society there is not even discussion of executing children. Why am I irrationally worrying about a child who has murdered innocent people without conscience? Legally he’s not my problem, the justice system will handle it and without the interference of rabid legislators. Legally not my problem, morally he’s the problem of every American, at least every American with a conscience.
God help.
TW+