People I Meet (And Run From) In My Dreams

One thing about enduring interesting times is that a person who does so spends a long time afterward processing what happened to him. That processing tends to show up at night, in the things that go through a guy's head during R.E.M. sleep.

So it is with me. It's been over five years since the last time I attended the abusive church I described in my blog, TH in SoC. For the first several months afterward, I very regularly had dreams about some of the more difficult people in the group (that includes almost all of the leaders, by the way), people that were a royal pain in the ... uh, neck to me. Most of that time I was quite angry. It finally occurred to me that I should do things to distract myself from rehashing the things I'd had to put up with during my involvement in the group.

During that time God providentially arranged for me to be assigned to a long-term consulting engineering contract in downtown Los Angeles, so I had to ride the Metrolink every day (expenses paid by my company, of course), which I had never done before. It was a welcome change of scenery and I encountered loads of new faces and new situations. During that time I also took a night class in creative writing at a local community college. Yet there were too many mornings when I'd wake up after a night of dreams re-hashing and processing old situations and encounters with old familiar faces, and I'd wonder why I never dreamed of work or school or riding the train instead.

Thankfully, the severity and frequency of the dreams has diminished quite a bit since then. I'm not really angry anymore. And if you want to talk about a change of scenery, I now live a thousand miles away from So. Cal. Yet even here there is an occasional night when old faces and old scenes insinuate themselves into my dreams.

Maybe I should write a song about this. Jackson Browne wrote “Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate.” Billy Joel wrote “River of Dreams.” Shawn Colvin wrote “Diamond in the Rough,” which has a memorable line, “I have lost too much sleep and I'm gonna find it.” If I have another “flashback” dream, I'll write a song titled, “Hey you! Get out from under my eyelids, man!” Then I'll have a good wry laugh. Does anyone out there from a similar background find that they're still “processing” things? How do you deal with it?

* * *

I attended Saturday evening service at the local rescue mission. Afterward, I asked one of the staffers a bit about the mission and the sorts of people they are seeing as visitors. He told me that while most of those who come to the mission are over 25 years old and dealing with substance abuse problems, there are some who come because they are victims of the current American economic mess. We talked about the needs of the residents and opportunities for volunteers to help out as he handed out bed tickets to a line of waiting men and the light rail trains rumbled by in the darkness outside. As I was leaving, he invited me back and said that I was welcome anytime. I may indeed make a return visit soon.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'm going to hook up with some bicycle riders and go on a long recreational ride. It's more fun to do it with a group than to ride by myself. The weather should be good. And I have a post in the works which I will publish soon, titled, “A Prayer for Hard Times,” a look at the Lord's Prayer found in Matthew 6.