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Thursday, March 13, 2003


"Thirteen hours of sleep, and an abandoned church."


Monday and Tuesday were long days at work. They weren't entirely dull and uneventful, but they weren't extremely exciting either. They were just typical long eight hour days standing behind the sales register....

Tuesday I was asked by a co-worker if I could cover another full shift on Wednesday, a day B&N had scheduled to give me off. I hesitated but then said yes, realizing that my paycheck would be a little bit larger if I did take the offer. I laughed silently at my luck (counter to the growingly stringent wishes of Barnes and Noble) and went in to work on Wednesday, giving my co-worker the much-needed day off so she could satisfy her previously conflicting needs. Unfortunately, that meant that on Tuesday I worked my regular evening shift, getting home early Wednesday, and then had to be back into work by 9pm later that morning.

Of course, as you can guess, that meant that by the time I got home after work early Wednesday evening, I was feeling rather tired. I had dinner, and went to bed early (meaning about 10:30 pm). As luck would have it, it was then that I entered the wonderful, yet always unusual world of the uncontious mind. Apparently, a tired mind and body tends to be most creative when it comes to dreaming.

Within this creative mental state (dream), I found myself in need of a new residence. I was no longer able to live in my present apartment in Milwaukee for some reason or another, so, I packed up my things and moved to some undisclosed small country town somewhere. Here I began a less than fruitful search for a new place to live.

As luck would have it, my sister (now recently married to Noah, her present real-life fiance) had also moved to this town. They had purchased a lovely country house on a quaint little residential street, and were getting settled into their new life. My sister somehow got wind that I was in town looking for a place to live, so, she tracked me down, and suggested an unusual option to me...

See, further down the street from where she and Noah lived, there sat, set back from the street and in a small grove of ancient trees, an old abandoned church. It was anything at all fancy, but rather an old faded and somewhat dingy clapboard building, complete with all the typical features of an early 1900's Christian place of worship. It also hadn't been used for anything in years (...however, I did find it odd that the grass surrounding the building was nicely mowed.). The exterior facade was in desperate need of cleaning, and had taken on a grungy, grey, dilapadated, and severely weather-beaten look. Meanwhile, the interior, seemingly more expansive than it appeared on the outside, was just as bad, severely littered with dust and debris from all those years of neglect. In short, this old church was a dingy eyesore on a quaint little residential street of nicely tended homes.

Well, strangely enough, this is where my sister suggested I move in. She kept insisting that since no one even cared about this building, it would be the perfect place for me to inhabit. Apparently she assumed that would also mean the town would literally give me free use of the building. In exchange for giving the building a use, the town apparently would not require any taxes from me. So, oddly, after careful deliberation, I decided to move in and make this old ruin my new home.

The strange thing about my new home, though, was that I didn't go nuts cleaning and repairing it. I chose to live in it as-is. Sure, I swept up some of the debris, put a new lock on the big old oak door in the front, and moved all my personal belongings into this church, but I didn't enact the much-needed upkeep on the place. It still looked as diapadated as when I first moved in. It was almost as though I appreciated the building's old appearance. I seemed to be content to live in a building that looked as though it could collapse at any moment.

Still, no one else in town really seemed to care, though they did recognize this old building as a home now. I rarely had visitors enter the building itself, but there were times that a number of friends in town did come over and we all grilled out on the 'front yard' under the shade of those massive old trees. I seemed very happy in this new home.

Years passed, and very little came of my life other than being the inhabitant of this old church. I guess I did have some kind of job in town, and people did came to know me as a friendly, kind, and unfortunately always single guy, but beyond my new home, nothing seemed to carry a whole lot of weight in my life. I had many friends, and was a normal citizen of this country town.... but I never married. I never chose to move into a 'real' house, I never grew tired of living in the ruins of an old clapboard church, and I never seemed to complain (even when the roof leaked in the rain). Yet, through it all, my life was a happy one.

I grew old, and, when I was about to die (of natural causes I assume),.... I woke up and found myself once again in my own bed, in my own well-kept apartment in Milwaukee, and surrounded by the things reflecting my real life. Yet, when I was dreaming that old church, those big old ancient trees, that small town, and that feeling of complete contentment with my life, seemed so real.

It makes me wonder sometimes, where do dreams like this come from? It is some random intersecting point of various anonymous threads of thought being jumbled together into one concrete story?.... Or is it something more, something greater -- something that somehow holds some kind of greater meaning to our own personal lives?

Whatever it is that causes those intensely real journeys into the subcontious mind, perhaps we'll never really be able to know. But I will say something for that experience (and those that have come before), each time I awake back into this reality, I am well-rested and feeling thoroughly refreshed -- ready for a new day.

In this case, I was asleep for thirteen hours, and still, even after a warm shower, lunch, and a waking four hours, elements of this dream still seem so vivid in my memory. Strange, yes. But, then again, perhaps God's creation will never really have the answers we often muse upon. Maybe it won't be until I am chatting in heaven that I finally learn, ...dreams are perhaps a small part of what's left over from the time when the human mind was capable of so much more -- a time when sin had only begun to erode God's wonderful creation. But hey, who knows. I guess I'll just have to wait until heaven to find out, right.... [contented sigh].

Well, have a wonderful end of the week all, and you are more than welcome to leave a comment or two. Maybe we both can muse upon the nature of dreams. I know it interests me somewhat. [grin].

Until next time,

Your happily musing friend,
-Jon

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Jon Baas

Blogging Since 2002!
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