Prayer and Prophetic Dreaming, the Spyglass

Dreams lead to prayer, prayer leads to understanding...
I just decide that I'm at the end of being amazed, and then BAM here I am again. I am amazed as I see this divine interaction business making itself apparent in a group of people, and not just for one individual, or even just for one family or a close friend in a personal setting, as has become familiar. Now it broadens (as I implied in the first blog under this title-stream) to involve more people and a setting more public...

In sharing with others at school about the dreams I had I realized my 11-year-old son also had a "crisis" dream for the school where I work. He had his dream last spring; and I hadn't thought of it lately, nor realized how similar was the imagery in it to that in my own crisis dream until something prompted me to look back at the description I wrote down at the time he had his. Most simliar was the imagery regarding broken hands--breaking a hand short-circuited this "bad" electricity he saw arcing from one person to another and spreading like an infection. Also, "mindlessness" appeared in both our dreams, although in his the image was not that a fall destroyed both the hand and the brain of someone (as happened in my crisis-dream) but rather this same strange, bad electric power destroyed it by basically making it inactive, a robot-mind as he put it. This was the infection. A man was spreading it quickly, but a woman was the primary source of the trouble. She accomplished her purposes by showing a movie on a big screen. This was my son's dream.

Then I learned that my principal at school also had a dream that he and the superintendent went to a sporting goods store where the super. bought a powerful automatic weapon, a rifle; while he bought himself a survival knife with a compass in the handle. I have been prayer partners for a good year now with this superintendent's wife, so I shared all this with her: it looks like we're getting multiple witness here forewarning us that battle is ahead of us, some crisis that God is positioning people to handle by His design and to His ends.

(stream of consciousness interlude here) Two things are in the gray zone of my curiosity right now regarding all this as I document it...computers and sports.

I saw something that connected the mountain in my dream with the idea of computers. I think of what I saw: this mountain in the middle of a lake in the middle of Alaska; and I consider how Alaska has Mt. McKinley centered, rising to be the highest point of earthly elevation on this continent. But in my dream, this mountain was surrounded by a lake, and this lake already is connected with a certain man, a man who in actual life teaches the advanced computer class. So I wonder even more about his role in all this given through the image of water, besides the obvious water imagery that is = refreshment, serving as a Christ image, etc. Now I wonder will he more specifically, serve as containment for some problem, functioning like a moat? Will this mountain bring some peace rising up from within him? I think of the Psalm that says, "Your righteousness, O God, is very high, You who have done great things; O God, who is like You?"

The other thing in the gray zone: all three dreams featured sports. Mine involved a kid having an accident while X-treme skateboarding. The principal's had them shopping for their weapons in a sporting goods store, and my son's had the school's athletic director as a "lead player." What are You saying about sports? Are they merely there to represent the idea of a contest being won or lost as an instructional example for a larger contest on a larger plane; or again, is the image less general and more specific? The answer: probably both.

(End of the aside, back to the chronological.) After hearing about the dream involving her husband in particular, this superintendent's wife promptly began to pray specifically for him and generally for the whole situation. The next day I had a memory pop that brought some clarity to the imagery of my principal's dream. It happened when I randomly read a magazine article about nursing home abuses, specifically one case where an ignored impacted bowel problem caused excruciatingly painful death to a man, but it was hidden by the nursing home. Only by luck--or divine intervention--did the surviving family members learn that the death that had been presented to them as "perfunctory" was anything but, and their efforts brought on the investigation that uncovered the truth and later brought them the benefits of a multi-million dollar out of court settlement. Life for the elderly person would have been besst, but at least some semblance of justice was served. The thought that came to my mind was...my mom was an RN who onve had a state job in which she did that very type of work.

They gave her the job title: trouble shooter.

Then suddenly my heart skipped a beat, because the dream snapped into focus. Now my principal is not one to experience dreams that have larger meaning, so I told him that whenever I have them, it seems that God is incredibly efficient with the imagery. Every image means something...God uses what seems to be randomness most effectively. I think the dream had the super. buying a gun because he will indeed serve as a trouble shooter in this crisis setting, unearthing some hidden problem and bringing it to accountability maybe? Meanwhile, the high school principal with his knife will serve more in the capacity of a trailblazer, leading and guiding a band of others through what feels like virgin territory.

I told them, also, that I thought that my dream seeming to take place on clock dial made me think that maybe I was receiving information about timing, with each hour on the dial being like a month: 12 hours matching 12 months...so with the "event" occurring at 4 pm when we (Scott and I) left on our trek from the 12 o'clock position made me wonder if it was to happen in April, or else about 1/3 of the way through the year, or maybe 2/3 of the way through my own tenure at the school, since it was at 4 pm and I'm in my second year, or my second time around the clock..but I was just thinking these things out loud with my prayer circle there at school as I don't feel that lock of certainty about this timing thing like I did about the revelation regarding the roles of these leaders.

But this weekend, again in that God using randomness to great effect vein, I did get a certainty-lock regarding the idea of timing, and maybe ragarding people--heaven help them. It happened like this:

We took time out from all the unpacking to watch family movies both Friday night and Saturday night. Friday night we watched The Little Mermaid. Saturday it was Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Both these movies had the following scene happen.

Someone holds a spyglass and the audience sees distant activity through that spyglass...in the one you see a distant Ariel waving, in the other, you see Davy Jones on a far ship. In both cases, when the spy glass comes down, the person/activity that looked distant is very close. It was a comic moment in Mermaid, for the creature holding the glass held it backward in ignorance; it was a startling moment in Pirates, for Davy Jones noticed he was being watched and supernaturally went from his place standing on his own ship to a place standing dead in front of the one with the spyglass.

The message: in some way or another, it is all a lot closer than it appears, and whether it is viewed with fear or as comic relief really anchors itself (my own nod to metaphoric efficiency, haha) on the depth of a person's faith.