At 6:30 A.M, I awoke with this corrective dream:

Winter’s cutting winds knifed my cheeks as I headed toward church and its Sunday’s service. Inside the dimly lit vestibule, I pushed open the oak-paneled doors and slid into the last pew and lowered my eyes and waited. Only a handful of worshipers also waited. Footfalls upon the hardwood floor startled me. Without greeting me, relatives waited until I moved over, then sat down. Within a short span, more relatives joined them, until the breath of a double-belted crone, now sitting next to me, nauseated me. She grimaced as I crossed in front of her and moved to another pew.

 In this dream, there is no life, no Eros, no color. Death’s imprint cackles in uproar, spits nasties within psyches, and enervates resolve. Even worshippers resemble bleached corn-husks, forlorn in frozen fields, yet page dog-eared hymnals for sustenance. Indeed, Death reigns supreme in this dream.

So why has my Dreamer cast me in this story? What more is there still to learn?

True, I’ve spent decades searching for ultimate meaning in churches, in dream work, in the tomes of erudite philosophers and theologians, in study travels to prehistoric sacred sites around the Western world. Yet after the initial élan of each exploration, there was still another project to pursue the Ineffable.

So perhaps the Dreamer reveals the grief in my psyche over what was. True, my lifelong pursuits have carried me afar and that is laudable. But beyond the pale of these moments of ultimate meaning lies something else, far more profound, impossible of conception by the human psyche. This is the Ultimate Truth to which I’m called.

I pray to be faithful.