Dream of: 08 February 1974 "Death In Church"
appreciate the difference between cave and church
Birdie
(my black-haired steady girlfriend from 1968 to 1972 from the time I was 16 until I was 20) and I were standing together near a high cliff in a hilly region. I was in the process of solving a mystery for a man who had been finding miniature animals in his home – the man didn't know where the animals came from. As I investigated the place, I found two small caves. A faint glow was emanating from the rear of one cave, as if the cave were actually a tunnel. Several baby chickens were standing in front of, and inside, the entrance of the cave. Upon closer scrutiny, I also found a baby tiger, a baby leopard, and a baby black kitten. An adult cat which appeared to be the mother of the kitten was also in the cave. I picked up the baby tiger and baby leopard, examined them and noted that they were about the length of one of my fingers. I then picked up the kitten. When I closed my hands over the kitten, the mother cat began meowing and sniffing my hand, but I wouldn't let her see her kitten.I played with the baby tiger and baby leopard and when I would drop them, they would immediately turn over in mid-air and land on their feet. When I dropped the kitten, however, it failed to land upright and instead, landed upon its head and lay motionless upon the ground. When I picked up the kitten and placed it on a platter which I found, it lay completely still, except for the slight palpitation of its stomach. Noticing liquid material with the consistency of snot clogging its nose and mouth, I pulled the material out. Still, the kitten didn't move. I looked around for the baby tiger and the baby leopard, but they had disappeared into the surrounding underbrush. I searched in the grass, tearing it up by the roots, looking through the grass and the dirt.
As Birdie and I stood on the edge of the cliff (about 10-12 meters high), Leroy Kegley (who attended Portsmouth High School with me in Portsmouth, Ohio from 1967 to 1970, but whom I barely knew) suddenly appeared and began tossing rocks at us in a playful way that nevertheless quickly made me angry. I began tossing the rocks back, only a little harder. Soon we were hurling rocks hard at each other and both of us were becoming angrier.
When I saw a small glass pint milk jar sitting near me, I picked it up and also threw it at Leroy, hitting him in the side. I was now defenseless. Leroy picked up the milk jar and as he started to throw it at me, I wrapped my arms around Birdie to shield her as she and I hung onto a small overhang of the cliff. I begged Leroy not to throw the jar - and he didn't. Instead, he started to walk away. When I stood up straight and followed him, however, he suddenly turned and threw the jar at me, but it missed. Leroy then picked up a can of shaving cream lying nearby and threw it at Birdie. The can of shaving cream hit Birdie and caused her to fall off the cliff all the way to the bottom. I raced down the cliff to see how badly she was injured. After I determined that she was injured but still alive, I climbed back up the cliff and chased Leroy for some distance.
I was gaining on him when he reached the door of a large church and ducked inside. I followed him into the church and caught him in a back room where he was on a raised platform which seemed like a stage with doors on both ends and a curtain in front which was pulled shut. Leroy and I briefly struggled until I was able to wrestle him to the ground.
Birdie walked in and quickly discovered a back-pack containing some of Leroy's possessions, as if Leroy were prepared to take a journey. When I saw that Leroy also had my sleeping bag, I assumed that he had somehow stolen it from me. Inside the bag were also some record albums, one of which was The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As I continued to hold him down, I told Birdie to see if he had anything else of mine.
Steve Buckner (a good friend whom I met in 1967 when we began the tenth grade together at Portsmouth High School) suddenly appeared. I explained to Steve what had happened and I asked him to help me hold Leroy down. Steve, however, wanted no part of it. I couldn't understand that, because I knew that Steve played guitar and that Leroy had stolen a guitar from Steve. Although Steve didn't want to become involved, he nevertheless helped me when Leroy began regaining his strength and almost overpowered me. After Steve and I restrained Leroy, I began tying Leroy up with some white rope. Once Leroy was tied up and subdued, Steve and I looked through Leroy's possessions for anything else which Leroy might have stolen. I told Steve to take whatever he wanted of Leroy's since Leroy owed Steve the money anyway. Although I only wanted what belonged to me, I did cut something off the cover of the Sergeant Pepper's album to take.
Only now did I realize that my sleeping bag was actually one which I had borrowed from Jim Shaw (who attended school with me in Portsmouth from 1964 to 1970). I had failed to ever return the sleeping bag to Jim. After Steve and I wrapped up Leroy in the sleeping bag, I watched Leroy roll around on the floor inside the bag.
On the other side of the closed stage curtains, on the side in front of the stage, was an area which looked like a basketball gym. When I noticed the lights in the gym being turned on and off, I realized someone else was out there. I stepped through the curtain and found an elderly lady standing on the other side. When she asked me what we were doing, I gave some excuse. She said she was looking for someone whom she was supposed to meet there and she asked if I had seen anyone. I said no. Looking through a side door, however, I noticed that another man had arrived. When I pointed to him for the elderly lady, she said that he was the person for whom she was looking. After she walked over to him, she and the man walked outside and departed in a small car.
Returning to the scene of the struggle on the stage, I found Leroy still rolling around, wrapped in the sleeping bag, while Birdie and Steve were pilfering through his possessions. Thinking something was odd about the way Leroy was moving, I stepped over to him and I found that he had one hand free, that he had rolled to Birdie's purse, and that he had extracted a knife. After I called for Steve's assistance, a struggle ensued which ended with Steve's being wounded. Infuriated by the injury, Steve wrested the knife from Leroy and used the knife several times on Leroy, raising and lowering the knife with great force into Leroy's body, until Leroy was dead. As I watched the scene play out, I realized that I had the choice of either murdering Leroy myself or having Steve do it. Being fearful of the consequences, I chose the later.
Blood was smeared all about. Noting that we were within 100 meters of the Ohio River in Portsmouth, Steve and I picked up Leroy and his possessions and began walking toward the river, intending to dispose of everything in the river.
Dream Commentary of December 11, 2014
The concept of the church as a metaphor for the Dream Journal web site has grown in my mind and I would like to explore it further by publishing my dreams about churches on the Dream Journal. I have 279 dreams in which the words "church," "temple" or "mosque" have appeared. As I proceed, I'll cull out those dreams of peripheral importance and try to stick with only publishing those dreams which have meaning to the church story, so I don't know how many that will be, but probably about 200, unless I can whittle out more. I will simply proceed in chronological order beginning with my earliest church dream, which is this one, and hope that these dreams will provide light on this symbol in relation to the Dream Journal.
I can certainly see some similarities between the Dream Journal and the scene in the church in this dream. Just as the dream had a stage inside the church, so does each person on the Dream Journal have a stage. What transpires on my dream-stage? Nothing less than homicide. What happens on the Dream Journal? Maybe not homicide, but something similar - the assassination of ideas. What a bloody mess - right inside the church.
One of those bloody ideas which I would like to see disposed of in the river of oblivion is precognition, and I think these dreams will lend support to Dream-Journal orthodoxy that precognition is untrue ... for - unlike a specious magician - nowhere in any of my church-dreams will I "see" the "actual future."
I do now see, however, that in examining the Dream-Journal/church metaphor, the subject of prophets and prophecy of a "possible future" may be worthy of consideration, since what church is without its prophets?
Thanks to SevenHawks for sparking my imagination on this subject and this way of approaching it.
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