Dream of: 19 May 1983 "Disrespectful In Church"

one's occupation

determines one's place in life

the question is why 

 My friend, Steve Buckner (whom I first met in 1967 when we began the tenth grade of Portsmouth High School together) was with me in a Sunday school class in a small room in a church. A teacher was present, as well as some teenagers whom Steve and I had seen somewhere earlier. The teenagers talked to Steve and me in an obvious attempt to convert us. They asked questions until Steve disrespectfully stood up behind the teacher and shocked everyone by shaking his butt around. I meanwhile tried to be as respectful as I could.

Some of the people wrote short critiques about Steve, describing how disrespectful he had been. They didn't think that I had been disrespectful - they simply thought that I was wrong because I didn't believe in what they believed.

After Steve and I left and walked around in the hallway outside the room, he said he might have been a bit too disrespectful toward the teenagers. I told him not to worry about it. When we walked back into the room, all the teenagers had left. A rather hefty woman with a red dress was now in the room and sitting on a platform on a small school-chair with a little desk attached to it. As Steve and I washed our hands, Steve began talking, and I told him to be quiet - he hadn't noticed the woman in the red dress, who was around the corner from where Steve was standing so he couldn't see her.

I walked back out into the hallway again alone and I again encountered some of the teenagers who were carrying some books. They said they weren't angry with Steve, even though they thought he had been disrespectful. They said they would still like to talk with Steve to see if they could help him change. I told them they could try. When they said that they thought that Steve would make a good dentist, I told them that was in law school.

Dream Commentary of January 2, 2015

I have the same sort of questions about respect for religion as I have about respect for the beliefs of dream-journalists on the Dream Journal. An out-of-body or remote-viewing experience, for example, which some dream-journalists maintain to be true, smacks of walking-on-water or virgin-birth to me, and I admit my difficulty in maintaining respect for people suffering from belief in such delusions. At least on the Dream Journal, it seems as if being truthful is more commendable than being respectful, so sometimes I incline toward being disrespectful of people's misguided personal dream-beliefs.