Prayer and prophetic dreaming--the frisbee

How strange that so many of us forget that You can be whimsical, O God.

Last year I had several dreams, ones that were only half-defined, ones that were only noteworthy in the strangeness and disconnectedness of their imagery. But were these not the footprints of your prevenient grace, leading me onward? Is it surprising, that now these disconnected images are the very ones that give shape to the things You have to say about the road ahead of me? Were they not images shot through with those very threads of whimsy that are nevertheless as strong as cords of steel when they come fromYour mind?

So here is just a start in describing a series of dreams that together form a cycle connected by this theme of playful intimate winking from Your eye, O God, as You leads me through what is such a strain for me and yet is such an easy matter for You--a refresher about Your nature much needed by me right now as well.

In this first dream--one I had over a year ago--I stopped along a road, a four-lane divided highway, and it was a road in a suburb near here called Carmel on a road I know as Rangeline Road. It was there that a young man lay face down on a stretcher in the road's median. I did not know who he was as he was face down, but now I can see for the first time why the road should be "that" road, for as I look at the definition of that word rangeline...I see many reasons that word is fitting--everything from that fact that a range is a thing that has the power to serve as a heating element (which will make more sense later in this text) to the fact that it is about a group of individuals in one order--which also comes to be a factor as this person's real identity comes to be revealed and our being of the same order--to its meaning "the horizontal distance to which a projectile can be propelled" considering the use of a Frisbee--such is the poetic economy of You, O God. The reason for this road was always a mystery--too obscure for me to even see fit to mention it in describing the dream, and now so very pertinent. As always, You remind me that You never waste anything--not a single image in a communication if it is from You, not a hair lost, not a bird fallen. But who loves You enough to perceive Your heart in these small things? (sigh) But I digress.
In the dream, and at the scene of this mishap, the lights of the emergency vehicles shone on this young man's shoulders where they rose up from the blanket the ambulance crew had thrown across him. The blue light shone upon those shoulders in such a way that it seemed like a living, glowing mist, and I approached it with my hands outstretched in prayer. Strangely, as I prayed that blue glowing mist grew, becoming a large sphere, the size of a man in its diameter, still glowing and still misty blue as it grew. To see the full-sized orb felt like a great work accomplished, a very good thing completed. For over a year now, I've held that dream loosely in the back of my mind, waiting to see who it was I prayed for and why, waiting to see how I might be a part of the growth of that beautiful sphere of Your light in someone. Now, over the past few months, You've brought a young man across my path--a man the age of my eldest son. Are You giving him the first evidences of Your God-breathed images in his dreams? Is He beginning to believe that You might shape communication with him such that it preceeds and leads his reading of Your word, a thing common between Thee and me but strange to so many. (Not everyone is like Coach, who when I meet him in the hall and I call out, "Hi, Coach," responds with "Hi, Prophet." Ha.) You know, O God, that I have been obedient to share with him what You've impressed upon me, and he and I have considered these things together, looked at the scriptural parallels, the signature verses that give these images sanctioning as genuine words from Thee, and we look at how You might define the purpose and the draw of what King Solomon called the enigmas hidden in these images. Whats more, a year ago when I had that dream, that young man was indeed at a place in his natural life (unbeknownst to me) where a dilemma springing from the possible choices of allegiance set before him did cause him a need of emergency care from the hands of Your angels.

That this particular young man was the one in this dream came to me gradually--well, is even still coming as is evident in my realization of the significance of the name of the road and of the city it runs through--a Carmel that was formerly called Bethlehem--all this and more are Your gentle affirmations; and even before now they were enough that I decided to share this dream with this young man, particularly the significance of the shoulders and the swell of Your holy light as the dream progressed...for this seemed the most prominent feature to me. I searched this word "shoulder" in my Bible's concordance and found verses I shared with him, verses about more ways this same Hebrew word is used besides our commonly understood meaning of shoulder, words about government and the bringing of people to a place of comment consent in matters of possible division. But this verse spoke to me personally as well:

Isa 22:22
And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.

Interestingly, this young man's name is David.
As a brief aside, I should say that twice before in my life I have had God tell me He would use someone to do something mysteriously beneficial to me, an offering of help to get me "unstuck" from a place of either confusion or blindness as to my purpose. Both times, and then this time as well, I got so excited about the "heavenly" vision of relief in a point of consternation--that I practically scared these precious ones with my exuberance, as I shared with them that they were to be that "tool in God's hand" and then proceeded to beg them to put themselves to the task. Of course, every time (this one included) God caused these people to balk at the idea, mainly because it was never intended to be their idea nor their initiative anyway...it was all God's work. Here again I was waiting to see how You would use this young man to be the "key of David" for me in resolving specifically the question of whether You were calling me to remain at the job I currently hold or to look for You to lead me elsewhere. Lately, I've had "leadings" both toward staying at my current job and toward going on to something different. Every time I'd think the "door" of divine-invitation opened one particular direction, but then the door to the other path would fly open, too, and invite me just as prominently. Meanwhile, I'd "heard" from You (even before this question of what I'd be doing next year was put to me by the school administration)--I'd heard from You that You intended to be silent for a time. How frustrating it can be to submit in all that. Fortunately, when I told my administrators that I thought You might take a little time in answering me, they were sensitive enough to Your ways that they accepted that idea, even chuckled at it--I suppose as they recollected similar issues they themselves had faced with regards to respecting Your timing.

In any case, You gave me a beautiful vision of how You'd use this young man to help me. But how do I share it, God? No wonder the prophets were so often killed. True vision from Thee is full of Your kind of intimacy, a fearless nearness, a transparency that is easy because it springs from flawlessness; but in the hearts of ones depraved does it not stir up their own knee-jerk lewdness their own automatic greed, etc? It is easy to tell of your excellent communication if the hearer has ever felt You come and speak to them in Your sweet transparency and goodness, but if they have never known You like that, it is indeed the difference between a cornerstone and a stumblingblock...Well, here is the vision and then the interpretation that came to me. In it, I was a body, head to torso only, lying face down, in a prostrate position before You, with my arms up, my hands basically parallel to my ears on the plane of the ground, my head turned so as to have my right cheek toward the sky. And this young man came over me, also only perceivable as a head to torso body. Strangely, he lay on my back, matching exactly every body part, arm to arm, cheek to cheek. As he lay there, a warmth spilled over me that turned to a deeper type of fire across my shoulder blades, that very same place I'd been drawn to look when I saw the glow originate in my first dream of this young man. And the verses about what these "shoulders" being the chosen part of the Body that speaks to what governs our choices sprang to my mind, as well as this one about this young man's unique way of being a key, one blessed not only with the gift of being "causative" as Blaise Pascal once said of the amazing gift God gives us when He gives us the privilege of prayer. No, this goes further. Any such key will ultimately prove--to be not only causative but also conclusionary. They are Your bringers of finality, an end-cap to the prayer threads You called forth in days past. Such I think might be the nature of many children in this young man's generation before You. So because he is a key that opens what should stay open and closes what should stay closed...permanently, then he is a fitting choice for Your hand to take up in aiding my sight to see what should be before me as doors of permanence that of late has seemed to be swinging purposelessly. So I heard from this dream that what would govern my placement next year would somehow come through him. Strange in every economy but Yours.

As for the image of the two bodies aligned with an exact matching of body parts, I think of the story of the strange healing of the woman's son in the history of the prophet Elijah and the corresponding miracle that was one of the hallmark ones marking Elisha as the receiver of Elijah's mantle, actually it is morein keeping with the latter. "...And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands; and he stretched himself out on the child, and the flesh of the child became warm..." 2 Kings 4:34 Somehow, the story of the associated ministries of these two prophets--this is part of what God is saying in these things. But for now, the reason is in a place too lofty, too far from the natural expression--for me to quite understand. If You see fit to bring it down to me, I'll know more. They say that the true intimate of God is not the one who knows Your secret sorrows but the one who knows Your secret joys. May it be so for me, O God, for this felt like a joyous holy warmth across my own shoulders. Let it be so, God.

Well, I waited and I studied on how this "type" of revelation has worked for me in the past, and I realized that always before, when the person actually did "become" that tool in God's hand, God brought the revelation to its closure in the natural world in the form of that person asking me a question. In my providing the answer to that question for Your name's sake, I proceeded to discover how they did indeed serve as a tool for Thee. Then would follow a great leap of awareness regarding my relationship to Thee and the stark significance of formerly dead, or else merely poetic, scripture would fly before me with such intensity I could hardly keep up with Your amazing brilliance.

But this time it is a little different. I think I see the way this young man has indeed inadvertently opened one door and closed the other. And true to the form of all these revelations, he very nearly could have served his purpose without ever being aware of it, for the answer from You does indeed hang on a thing that the boy does not know has anything to do with You and me. Here I come full circle to the element of whimsy. But this time, one element is running backward (but should I be surprised? For the idea of a backward look is also one You've stirred upon me lately, and one You're even now just coming to define in the covenant language of Your Old Testament prophets.) I find that this time I have to ask him something, a ridiculously small thing--such a pristine example of the foolishness of God that we read is so much wiser than the wisdom of men.

So, David, here is the subject of interest to me: When you said you just bought yourself a Frisbee, and when you spoke of how having a new Frisbee was a thing you had anticipated with relish for quite some time, you nevertheless failed to tell me what color it was. And that is my question. I saw an orange one between your feet when you were playing the other day. Is the one you got for yourself an orange one?

Edit--after making inquiry, I learned he bought two oranges and a white one. The orange ones are the ones of interest to me. I dreamed a year or so ago of an orange frisbee strangely placed in a very sequential dream. I'm going back into my old dream/prayer journals to see more of that dream. That I may be on the right track--that this frisbee-bearer (ha) might be a marker to indicate my place in that other dream looks pretty likely. Scott even commented on having seen our old broken orange frisbee, suddenly revealed by the melted snow, in a pile of dead leaves while he threw for the dog. This on the day after I began thinking on these things...my mark of redundancy that You often give me to show I'm on the right track.