Houses. Really? (Second Dream)

Dream Two:

My mother has just moved. She is living in a new city. It is an uptown apartment complex near a local university. I can see the tall, red brick buildings of the campus rising against the blue skyline behind the gated community. It is mid afternoon on a Saturday. The grass is green and the flowers are in full bloom.

I drive through the electric gate and park outside the front. My mother already has visitors walking through the door. I don't recognize the faces. It looks like a married couple with younger children.


I slip inside to find myself entering a cool, dim atrium. My feet echo on the white tiles. My mother gives me a warm, soft hug and kisses my cheek. I can already see a set of stairs leading to a second floor balcony. A hallway is tucked below leading to several hidden rooms. Soft, dusky light pours inside from windows I cannot see.

I curiously round the corner and find myself in a spacious living room. The furniture is dark and elegant. I have full view of the balcony now, and it stretches above the length of the living room. Bedrooms doorways are open, inviting exploration. Massive bay windows are framed by lacy curtains. They expose the light I had seen before.

I can see the kitchen to from here, towards the back left of the house. It follows suit with the living room. Wide, open, neat and clean. The counters are a gray marble, the walls a deep red.


It is like the house my mom has always dreamed of having. This cannot be an apartment! My observations are further confirmed as I climb the stairs to the second floor. More and more guests are arriving, but you would hardly know. There is a peace and feeling of sanctuary about this place.


I quickly lose count of how many bedrooms I find. The rooms are so interwoven between the bathrooms, a library and a siting room. I nearly lose my way back the stairs.


How did my mom get this house?

Every room is expertly decorated, elegantly arranged and very clean. The colors are rich, full and beautiful. The visitors are wandering around staring in awe.


I approach glass doors that open to a veranda on the outside of the master bedroom.


I open them and bright afternoon light hits me full in the face.

Houses. Really? (First Dream)

Houses.


Every shape. Every size. Every color. Sometimes only one room, sometimes dozens. They can move themselves, fall apart, or prove to be a maze of confusion. A house can be a danger or a comfort, it still stands in the center of everything.


I am not lying when I say every single dream I have experienced, as far back as my memory can reach (which is pretty far), centers around this central object.


I never thought much about it until I reached college.


Then two dreams triggered a connection of how meaningful the symbol of a house is to me.

So let me explain...

Dream One:
It is my twenty first birthday. There is a huge crowd of people. We are in a house in the middle of a massive field of tall, rolling grass. Well, at least that is what I can see from the windows. It is one of those old, antique homes, with white chipped siding, scuffed wood flooring and a musty smell of use.
There is children running hysterically, in every direction, screaming and shouting. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and my immediate family are gathered in the living room. Friends from college and even from high school are mingled throughout the crowd. My mother is coming from the kitchen holding a white cake covered a dozen brightly lit candles, the crowd parts like zipper to let her through.


Then I someone hands me a present. It is a baby white rabbit. It begins to grow in my hands. No one seems bothered. I set it on the floor feel my heart race as the children coax the fluffy animal to hop up the stairs.


I am not enjoying this party. I should be. I want to be. But something is wrong, something I can't see. Something I can't put my finger on. What is the rabbit about? What is it about this house?

There are no other emotions, no other thoughts, except this irritating premonition.

Everything cascades across my mind like a collage of emotions, only they are images and sounds. It is not pleasant, but confusing. I can feel myself losing control.


I want to back away from the crowd. I want distance myself. The house is closing in, but I blow out the candles. Everyone is singing the birthday song. Then I see the stairwell.


It is a narrow set of stairs, ascending to the second floor. A railing of columns lines the side facing the living room. The kind of railings little children love peeking their noses through and sometimes even their heads.

My younger cousins are racing up the wooden steps in a frenzy after the frightened rabbit. My anxiety is growing rapidly and the crowd is pressing in closer. I take several steps backwards towards the stairs. Maybe I can retreat to the second floor to regain my crumbling composure...and perhaps save the white bunny?
My hand touches the railing and I gasp in shock. The wooden column disintegrates into dust under my fingers, mushrooming towards the floor. I glance around. People are nearly touching me in proximity but they don't seem to notice the first railing has vanished.


I decide to keep going up the stairs and place my foot on the first step. Maybe I just imagined that.

I am losing my mind.


My hand moves up the railing. Both the step and the railing my hand touches disappear in a cloud of dust and shattered splinters.
I panic and charged up the stairs. I can't grab hold of anything. The stairwell is falling out from under my feet.

Then it gets worse.
The house begins shaking. The windows are shattering, the walls are caving in.


The kids are still playing tag with the rabbit and the my crowd of birthday guests keep talking. No one can see the disaster happening directly around them.


The rabbit comes racing down the vanishing stairs and I turn running after it. Why? I don't know, but it seems to give me hope. Maybe it can lead me from this chaos. I shove my way through the crowd, ducking from the falling debris.

We weave through the kitchen and out onto porch. The rabbit has significantly grown. It is massive and fat.


The sun is shining, the wind is brushing the grass. I catch my breath and run into the front yard as the rabbit pauses, scratching its ear.


The house is standing still and silent.

Flying (Fourth Dream)

Dream four...I am back at that summer camp. Only once again it looks completely different. We are on a hill, the buildings are log cabins and there are so many trees it looks like an east coast countryside.


All my family is visiting, as is people from my old church, my new church and every friend from both high school and college. We are about to start a worship service, but no one can find my youngest brother. My current college pastor scatters every one across the camp to find him. My mother is very worried and I tell every one it will be fine. I can find him.


And then, like Nathan Petrelli from the TV show Heroes, I shoot into the sky, above the trees and the camp and fly towards the opposite end. My eyes rove across the grounds, around the buildings and under the trees.


My brother is no where to be seen. I reach the end of the came and loop back around dipping over the nearest high line wires and circle lower to the ground around some trees.


Then I hear voices coming from a small cabin near the center of the camp. There is my brother sitting at a table, with a couple of his buddies eating ice cream.


It is way to early in the morning to be eating that stuff, I think. I holler at him to get his rear back to the group and then fly back to my mother.

**

Am I crazy? Do I really have inspirations of being Peter Pan? Really?
I think not. These dreams makes no sense to me.


None at all.

Flying (Third Dream)

My third dream is really choppy and fantastical. Let me explain.

We are in a battle. It is not exactly the serious, I-am-going-to-kill you type war. It is more playacting. I am leading an army and my best friend (a strange I guy I do not recognize from real life) is leading the opposing forces.

Our battlefield: An urban neighborhood.

Weapons: Swords.

Who?: About forty college students.

How?: We are flying. Like Peter Pan. (that's the best way I can describe it)


It's late evening and all the lights are turning on in all the houses across the neighborhood. My army is hovering just behind a grove of thick trees. Our enemies are hidden in a nearby backyard.


Suddenly they appear, flying towards us in the dark air, swords raised. We duck, roll and engage in combat.


It becomes a tangled mess of flying, and spinning, blocking, and diving through trees, between houses and over roofs.


The sound: Everyone is laughing, mocking laughter...like Peter Pan.


The battle continues throughout the duration of my dream...

Flying (Second Dream)

My second dream begins with me walking on the Lunsford trail around Abilene Christian University. Several of my girlfriends are with me. I am walking along pushing a bike beside me. In front of Gardner Hall we cross paths with the college pastor at the local church Kingdom Life and a guy named Andy, also from Kingdom Life.



They engage me in conversation and the other girls wander off. Both guys ask if they can pray for me. I say yes, we close our eyes as they begin praying.


The most peaceful sensation fills my body, like water being poured over you on a hot day. I dare to open my eyes and then gasp. I am floating in the air above Andy and the college pastor. They are still praying and they don't seem to realize I have left them. I hover there, spread out on my stomach, clothing slightly rippling in the breeze. I can hear the voices of the men praying, low and deep.


But I can't move, I can't get back down to the ground, I just sit there flying above the Lunsford trail.

Flying (First Dream)

"For once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been, and there you long to return." -Leonardo Da Vinci

I have frequent dreams of flying that have intensified in the last year. It is almost like I am learning how to fly in sequence of experiences, because each dream I am a just little bit better than the last one.

**

My first dream I had over a year ago. I was at summer camp I use to go to in high school. Only it look much different. We were in the middle of a city instead of outside in a urban neighborhood. We were living in dorm instead of in tents. It was almost lunch time and I walked outside. For the oddest reason I decided to jump. It was like my feet were injected with springs. I ascended twice as far than I normally would. I remember grinning and then jumped again. I was nearly double the size of my height. What was happening?

As the dream continued I began a jumping journey to see how high I could truly get. It was like scientist in Flubber, only I had no gel on my shoes. Everyone who was watching could hardly believe their eyes. Nor could I. I seemed to be out of control as I hopped across the lawn, gaining altitude above the trees and three story buildings. 


Then it ended abruptly with me flying above the trees into the sky...

This dream takes places on the morning of, February 01, 2006

I stood upon a building of some kind and before me was vast prairie, a lot like rural Texas. People, who I knew were my friends, stood here and there around me. Directly in front of me were three crosses, and hung on them were three bodies, dressed in colorful, stripped blankets like the Navajo Indians, their long black hair waved in the wind.

They were dead. Everyone around me was agitated and upset over these three lifeless bodies. But I couldn’t understand why we were. I stepped down and began walking towards my left.

Suddenly I found myself beside a broken down corral and among people with faces of death. They were jeering and mocking me. One man particularly seemed to hate me. I realized, as I do often in my dreams that I was a young man, no longer myself. Strange how I change back and forth between a male and female.

With horror, yet not frightened I knew the people around me were demon-possessed, their souls dead, yet they were crying out to be free…except the one man who was trying to corner me.

Glancing back towards my right I saw the three crosses and the building once again and my friends. I look down and I find my hands clenched around several small blue stones. I am knocked to the ground a couple of times, before I realized these people and this one man wanted the stones I held in my hands.

With perfect calmness I threw them as hard as I could towards the three crosses. The sailed far and wide, falling into a pile off dust just at the foot of the crosses. The crowd around me cried out in protest and took off running, yet couldn’t find them.

The world I saw, where the crosses and the building stood they couldn’t see, only a field. I had thrown the stones across the barrier of their world where I stood and into safety in the other world. I realized I could easily step across and escape them…but I woke up.