The eagle and the cave-fish

There is no such thing as a proud holiness.
So said Oswald Chambers in the devotional I read this morning. The words ring loudly in the caverns of my mind, in the places unexplored as pride begs I look instead at the resplendent autumn that cloaks the ground above that dank darkness hidden below the surface. But You made them all--both the fields and the caves--as homes to Your uniquely-made creatures. Both the cunning eye of the eagle who sees nearly everything and the blind fish who see nothing and know nothing but the world of the dark cave, who would argue that no such world as the eagle's could possibly exist based on their experimental reality. You offer Your same essence to both, miraculously made fit for both to receive.

For some time, I've pondered the unwittingly sad and impertinent cry of the fish who can not dream beyond the cave. But...I fear too long I've presumed wrongly about that eagle. I've thought him to naturally consider his environment not only more lofty in actuality, but also more lofty in purpose than the humble domain of the sightless fish. In truth, if one can't see the beauty, the honorable humility fashioned into the one, then the holiness of the other is lost under a mantle of pride.

Prophetic Dreams Find Company, a letter

To my dear young friend who steps up and sometimes shares some of the dawning moments of his own dream-ministry (as one of my long-term friends--a long-seasoned Christian--calls my own ministry.)

I've thought about the dream you shared with me the other day. You dreamed a brick house on the property where we work had been invaded by entities that were bad. You dreamed that you rose up to take these invaders on in battle, but the equipment you had in hand was a strange meld of real and toy weaponry. You dreamed that when you were in the house, you were in danger of "losing" the battle, so you retreated, running to a barn across the campus. I think about the first dream you shared with me, one in which you were walking on ice, and slipping, began to fall backward, but woke before you knew whether you actually "fell" or not. I think God is giving you the second dream partly in answer to your questions about the first one: of what you'll do when the ice becomes a problem. It may also be in part to prepare you for what that ice itself might look like.

My own place of work there on campus is back near that barn where you escaped in your dream, so I'm rather familiar with what happens there. Here is what I see in the "real world" that after all is only a shadow of the Real World. It is a place where:

• fires are kindled, often to burn off dead wood; and not for sitting and enjoying as in the camp-fire site on the other side of campus. Here are the functional fires.
• a little cemetery can be viewed behind a fence, causing the existence of ones long dead to be remembered by unlikely members of future generations, given the hidden and remote nature of that little cemetery
• tools are stored and things are repaired.
• And then interestingly, just yesterday, it became the place where one of the campus buses went for a good washing. Considering how just the day before I mentioned to you about my son's dream of his activity on a bus, and my own observation that dream-world vehicular travel often signifies a person's spiritual journey, and the more people the vehicle carries, the larger the group in transit together spiritually. If that is the meaning, then I think it is a good sign for the corporate church that its bus gets washed periodically. (smile)

Yes, I do believe that little barn represents a dear place of activity to God. That your dream-self knew to run to such a place for renewal in a time of need is very good.

Here's one other thing: pay particular attention to those elements that seem strange, like the weaponry you were using. Often in my spiritual dream, the things most inexplicable at first are the most meaningful later. Here is an example.

I had a dream in which I traveled in a car with a bunch of kids. We were trekking happily along when suddenly a blinding blizzard came up out of no-where. In white-out conditions, I hit the brakes, and got the car stopped just before it crashed into a wall of wreckage: cars that had been piled there for decades, covered in a blanket of snowy frost so old it looked more like freezer-burn than snow. A deep twilight had suddenly fallen and a soft snow continued to glowingly drift downward. A group of young hikers (at this point, people were now reduced to foot traffic) came up and asked if I had a knife for cutting through the wall of debris. I said yes, but it was only a small box cutter I had in my purse, one given to me by my husband. One young man--the leader of their group--took my little box cutter, ran his thumb along it, and then looked at me like I was an idiot.

"This isn't even sharp" he said.

"But you're feeling the wrong side of it!" I exclaimed, but before I could get him to check the other side of the blade, someone else came up with a gorgeous knife--shiny, curvy and with a pearly golden porcelain handle. I knew it to be lovely, but far too flimsy for use in the job they intended, nevertheless they took off with it eagerly toward the wall of cars before I could convince them otherwise. I had this dream about three years ago. I still am learning what it means.

Many inexplicable images float in that dream, but over these last three years I've learned many things about its meaning. I've learned that the wreckage of the cars is like the wall that marks the end of this age of man. The snow is the prophetic covering that tells us there is more on the other side, (where/when the lion lays with the lamb and a little child safely plays at a snake hole, etc.) but that snow is grown so old in its waiting to melt and have its eventual effect on its world that the light has dimmed to faint twilight. Most recently, the tools in hand came to greater clarity, but that took much more faith to receive. It went like this:

In a completely different setting, I prayed a visualization prayer in which I made intercession for those people I mentioned in a recent blog--the ones trapped in a ring of cardboard that from the outside looked small and easily taken apart but from the inside seemed to encompass massive and inescapable space. I pulled people out of that space in this prayer-vision, because I came at them from the outside and because God approved my belief that I could operate as part of their rescue team. But in the original dream, I--and many others--were existing in that place on the "inside" instead of outside--the place beyond the powers that deception could play. Altogether the dreaming and waiting, the spending of myself in prayer and the sharing of the vision of the prayer with another were required for any further understanding to enlighten the "wisdom" of the dream inself. I learned that the wall of crashed cars, if viewed from the proper perspective--i.e. outside its caging powers--might indeed be a thing of "similar material" to what I penetrated in my intercessory prayer. In that case, a box-cutter would be the perfect tool and the perfect image for God to give me in the dream, despite the years that would go by before I'd be ready to understand what was His brilliant purpose in using that imagery. In His timelessness, He would know what I'd be exposed to as "visual aides" in the day when the eyes of my understanding should be opened, and so He used those very images, knowing I'd ponder them in my heart until life highlighted them again.

What's more, at the same time these puzzle pieces began to fall into place, I went to church and found myself breathless at the pertinence of the picture on the front of the bulletin. In that picture, a man stands holding a piece of cardboard in front of his face, literally a box cut and unfolded. On it is scrawled "Mind Games" in heavy marker. He holds it in front of his own face, keeping the wall in front of him, but still he peers over the top, a sign of hope for something different outside the wall. During the service, an easel on stage held a similar piece of cardboard that said "Abandoned by God." By the end of the service, the worship team flipped the cardboard to show what the other side of the "wall" had written on it: "Loved by God." The next week, the image was repeated with the words "I Can't Do It!" and by the end, the backside of the cardboard said:"God Can!"

So what could have been chalked up as an "I ate pizza too late at night" type of dream in which a wall of crashed cars were something I adamantly believed could be taken down by a little box cutter...instead of laughing it off--that very dream became an opportunity for the Spirit of God to tell me things most profound and undeniably from His very hand: that a wall of flimsy mind games (ones that looked so powerful and stopped so many when viewed from the wrong side) could easily be taken down with the right tool--one specifically designed for the cutting down of mind games, but that I should not expect the population at large, especially when reduced to foot-travel to be willing to consider what the wall might be made of from His perspective. After all, many cars had crashed there...and I myself nearly so.

So if the Spirit of God revealed to you odd-looking weaponry in your arsenal, I pray that you be watchful until He "melts the snow" regarding them, showing you what they really represent. And when you run to that barn, may you find what He would have you take up instead! It will be not only for your good but for the good of many when you come out on the other side of this one, my friend!