Percolating Dreams - Part Two

I made 100 business cards two score and seven days ago that read:
Fresh Green Writing / Freelance Writing and Editing
with my name and cellular phone and email laced along the bottom. I spent the thirty dollars on the little stack because I have it in my mind to start using my enjoyment of words in some constructive way. So I decided I’d start my own little business doing odd-editing jobs or writing fresh copy for businesses or non-profit companies.
I haven’t yet officially started, though there are some dreams percolating.

For one thing, I don’t think I just want to do this alone. I want to start a company that will be a small circus of creativity. We would do lots and lots of different things, but they'd all focus on helping others communicate with greater clarity.

I want to help collect a network of writers and artists who will work on projects together, in some wild dialogic way. (I think that the extensive monologues in our lives are all boring us fairly well, thank you.) We might not need to be centralized at one location. (But if we have to, there will be good espresso and excellent food.) We could likely be highly networked through the internetting.

We could do all sorts of things to make the written and spoken word more intelligible. We could help edit term papers and books and pamphlets. We could help churches in simple conflict resolution. We could help companies better communicate their ideas in their mailings and newsletters and even make their boring manuals readable and interesting. We could do workshops at schools helping tired teachers stir the creativity of their bored students. We could tutor international students in using English effectively. Who knows what else?

We will have to be expert communicators, dripping with creativity, and willing to adapt. We could become innovators for creative communication in English, the same way 3M has become innovators in solving problems with new technologies.

I don’t know, I am just announcing dreams. But it will be fun, if it happens.

(Image by Monettenriquez)

"He Calls Me To Be A Life Again"

(for Rachel and her dreams) some re-discovered words from Buechner's The Alphabet of Grace :

Beneath the moonlit drifts of sheet, I turn in my sleep and draw up my knees...And with my knees drawn up, I dream I am sitting down. I am sitting on a stool at a bar, and my glass has left a wet ring on the wooden counter-top. With my finger, I start to move the wet around. I move it this way and that way with nothing much on my dream of a mind. And then on the smooth counter of the bar I write a name. When I have finished writing it, I start to weep, and the tears wake me up. I cannot remember the name I wrote, but I know that it was a name that I would be willing to die for. Maybe it was the secret name of God or the secret name of the world. Maybe it was my own secret name. The dream is only a dream, but the tears are exceedingly real.

Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and God said, "Let there be light." Darkness laps at my sleeping face like a tide, and God says, "Let there be Buechner." Why not? Out of the primeval chaos of sleep he calls me to be a life again...To wake up is to be given back your life again...Waking into the new day, we are all of us Adam on the morning of creation, and the world is ours to name. Out of many fragments we are called to put back together a self again.

"My poor misguided child," my grandmother says, "is all this cloudy rhetoric your way of saying that in the morning you wake up?"

"Yes, it is," I say...

-Frederick Buechner

(Waking up photo by Phil Hilfiker)

Most Vivid Dreams - part 72

It’s time for yet another installment of Nelly talking about her vivid dreams.

It is healthy and enjoyable to write down my dreams from night-time and allow folks to pontificate about their meaning. So, get ready all you Josephs and Daniels…and Danielas and Josephines!

I was playing baseball at Yankee stadium. The place was packed, and all eyes were on me, but I wasn’t nervous at all. I had on my game face. I hit a line drive to center field and almost forgot to run to first base, because the hit surprised me so much.* I even made a double out of it, once I got to running. My double was replete with a really nice slide into second, I should add, and umpire-man called me “safe.”

Upon advancing to third base, I stole home on a catcher’s error. I dove headfirst and the crowd went especially wild. As I picked myself up from the victory-dirt I unabashedly sassed the catcher for fumbling around with the ball, and letting me score. But as I mocked him, I realized he was just an 85 year-old man with a long white beard. Then I felt a little bad for all of the jeering.

In another scene, Jesse Borden was showing me some cool new white linen garb he had picked up from his recent trip to India. It had all of these interesting things attached to it, like tiny whittled wood things that were actually little Indian flutes. Jesse was psyched to have such a cultural outfit with lovely musical instruments built within it. I remember thinking how “Jesse” it looked. Perfect for an African boy so wild with adventures. (His Mama would be proud.)

Then in another scene, I was in California or Florida, in a neighborhood where there were many fires spreading from some natural phenomenon. I was inside with a bunch of friends--I remember Jane, especially--and we were all having a grand time. That is, until I peered out the window and could see the fire heading towards us, and then I turned into Fire Marshall Nelly. I desperately tried to push everyone out of the house, but it took forever to convince them that there was danger, real danger, folks! They were totally lollygagging, and I was yelling at them to move. Once I finally got them shuffling, I grabbed my guitar, my laptop, and a few other odds and ends, and ran out of the house to safety. But nothing ended up happening, in the end. No fire. Just me yelling.

* (I may have played fast-pitch softball for 10 years in real life, but softball is not so much like Major League baseball.)

"Little girl, I say to you, get up"

Last night I dreamt that I was in a European square near a riverfront. There were loads of people around and live musicians playing happy music. I was sitting down, looking bored, and just trying to blend into the scenery. All of a sudden, Arianna emerged, and she insisted that I get up and dance. I fussed and moaned (I'm really not a hot dancer), but she persisted that I was missing something in the music. She pulled me along and led me in a ballroom dance all around. We even danced up and down big European steps that led from the square. I was a sight!

At times I got lazy and she had to ask me to stop dragging my feet and to please just follow her. I had no idea what I was doing with my feet, but I was giggling a lot. When the music stopped, we were down near the river's edge. We hugged and I laughed.

I woke up feeling so happy and assured. There's so much going on in my life right now that I'm not sure where to step forward first. I guess I'm feeling like the Nelly that was sitting down bored in the square, paralyzed with uncertainty. It seems that last night Jesus showed up in my dream in the form of my dear new friend, Arianna, to encourage me up to dance, and to please not be afraid. I just need to hang on to him while we he leads and we listen to the music. And then we'll hug and I'll laugh.

(Photo by Carolink)

Ajuda Me

A few nights ago I dreamt that I was back at a cafe in Portugal, ordering pastries and coffee in the early evening. It was the first dream I've had in a long while where I was speaking Portuguese, not English. After ordering my milky galao, the sassy-pants barista demanded that I order an aperitif instead of a coffee, on account of the hour of the day. I can't imagine this ever happening in Portugal. It was as if I were in Italy (where I can imagine this happening) and was reprimanded for ordering a cappuccino too late in the day. Flustered, I did my best to apologize for my huge social blunder.

But then, the nightmare. I couldn't remember how to say "I'm sorry" in Portuguese. All I could get out of my mouth was "mi dispiache," which is the Italian.

To make matters more weird, numerous days later (in real life), I still can't remember what the Portuguese is for "I'm sorry." I lived there for over 3 years, and all I can think of is the Italian! Granted, the last thing I did before I moved from Portugal back to America was to take a 2-week intermediate Italian class in Florence. But still. I'm troubled. Somebody ajuda me.

(Photo of the lovely Costa da Caparica: Dsevilla)

Most Vivid Dreams - Part 3

Last night I had another incredibly vivid dream. I'm sure part of it was born out of one of my classes at Fuller: Ministering to Street Children.

I was in Italy, sitting on the second floor of an apartment that faced the street. It was a gloomy, rainy day, and I was looking out the window. My eye caught two young girls who'd walked out into the street who couldn't have been older than seven. They were all alone and playing in the puddle-filled street.

Then, in the magical-speed of dreams, the street below began flooding with rain, and water rushed from one end to another. The little girls seemed totally unaware of the danger that they were in. One of them had a toy boat that was large enough for her to sit on, and from the window I saw her motioning as if she was going to try to ride on it for fun in the flooded street.

I looked around the apartment and realized that no one but me saw this happen. So I barreled down to the street, only to arrive to find her being carried away by the stream. I felt helpless. But then as I peered way down the street I could see a small group of adults who were headed towards her to catch her.

I ran over to the girls' friend, who was still street-side, totally unaware of what had just happened. She had a "nobody can hurt me" attitude about her, though she was so very young. She was incredulously drinking cheap beer, even. I tried asking her in (my pitiful) Italian if she thought her friend was ok, but she answered me in English, quite nonchalantly. It didn't seem she even cared.

The group of adults showed up with the girl, and they appeared to be folks about my age. There were four of them, mostly from the States, but one from Asia. They explained that they all ended up in Italy through this one friend of theirs' named, Chuck. So, strangely, instead of giving me their contact info, they gave me his.

And we all ended up at a weird American breakfast buffet that was very strange to find in Italy. Other Americans joined us, but they seemed clueless on how to be polite and quiet in a European country. No one knew how to pay the bill properly, so I ended up doing it.

(Flood Picture from the National Weather Service's article on Flash Floods: Turn Around Don't Drown.)

[Extra]Ordinary Stairs

I have a great deal to report, especially after a weekend of 24-7 prayer with the teens/pre-teens at my church. Tomorrow I will try to post some pictures from our wild little adolescent prayer room. But for now I'd like to turn to Zechariah, and to a vivid dream I had yesterday about stairs, worship, and community.

I've been itching to study the minor prophets for the last few years. They seem so underrated and mysterious and glossed over. (Those are my favorite kinds of anything, incidentally.) Well, I'm finally at a season in my life where I can sit down with a few commentaries and really study these minor keys. I'm starting with Zech.

Zechariah had 8 profound visions in one night. Taken as one, they all concerned the role of Jerusalem before the Messiah would reign forever and make all things new. The prophetic words greatly encouraged Israel at the time, because they'd recently returned from captivity, and were desperate for God's blessing once again. But Zechariah's words weren't fulfilled in his time. They spoke of a time to come.

All of this study about visions and dreams has me thinking about loads of things. But today, for one, I can't get out of my mind a dream I had yesterday. I was resting in the afternoon, after a nice drive back from Baltimore and lunching with Wanda and Renee. I fell into quite a deep sleep for just taking a nap, and I dreamt of stairs.

I was with two younger women, climbing ordinary-looking, unfinished wooden stairs that seemed to go miles high. As we started walking together up the stairs, I said, "These stairs will take us deeper into God's presence. I won't let you fall behind me." The young women nodded, and we climbed.

As we neared the top, the two panicked. They remembered another young woman was far below, still on the ground. She'd never started climbing. They looked at each other, and then at me, and shouted frantically:

"Vicky! We have to go back down to get Vicky. She needs us to help her up these stairs."

And so they made the long journey down, and helped Vicky begin making the climb up the wooden stairs. She was visibly reluctant, at first. But they managed the way upwards through their persistence as they walked alongside of her.

Now, I'm no Zech, and no, I haven't been listening to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." But I do think there is loads in that dream that speaks of our profound need for each other, and of our deepest need to "come up higher" into God's presence.
There is much to be said about worship in the dream.
The stairs were so ordinary! They were unfinished and rough, but sturdy. There were no hand-rails! How risky the way up really was. I only knew that I was safe climbing upward with a few others beside me.

Most Vivid Dreams - Part 2

I am a little sick and have been sleeping a lot. More sleep makes for more dreams, I say. In this second edition of my dream recollections you'll find Bingo, structure, golf, and my not knowing how to do things appropriately. Again, any interpretations welcome! (You can find Part 1 here: Most Vivid Dreams.)

I walked into a packed classroom with long rows of about 10 desks and 6 rows deep. There were only women in the classroom. The atmosphere was so serious. The teacher was a man, but a young one. He went around and policed everyone to make sure we each had our school supplies. Strangely, though, the only supplies that mattered consisted of a horrendously large Bingo card (I'm talking 30 x 30 instead of 5 x 5), and some sort of Bingo markers. It was cooler to have one of those Bingo-inkers, rather than just little pieces of circular plastic.

I was in the front row. I remembered that Elise was in the middle rows behind me. Teacher-boy started calling out numbers, but I could never hear him, so I had to ask the girl next to me. I thought I was doing pretty good and had some long horizontal lines filled up, but then realized that I didn't know the rules. Which horizontal lines counted for Bingo? And do I yell Bingo? And why were we playing? Everyone was so serious in the room.

Then teacher-boy loosened up and started playing his guitar. He was trying to play some new song and was stuck on which chord came next. So he singled me out and asked me how to play a B-14th. I had no idea (it sounds like a Vitamin, not a guitar chord), but I immediately pointed to Elise and said, "She knows, I'm sure. Ask her."

Then he jaunts out of the classroom and starts singing. It didn't sound bad. Good, actually. He was singing a song I couldn't place. Ray LaMontagne? Phil Wickham? Elise and I looked at each other for a second because he sounded surprisingly good. She rolled her eyes at me, though, when I said he was singing Ray or Phil, because I was way off. And so we left the room to hear him sing.

Shortly after we entered the new classroom where teacher-boy was jamming out, the room stretched and tons more women showed up. They were all professional cheerleaders and dancers. They were doing all sorts of choreographed stuff. I was just watching from a distance.

Then I was in a kitchen in Maryland, holding lots of my bank receipts. They were receipts from my old account in Portugal, but they were written in English. (Strange.) They alerted me to the fact that I only had 20 Euros left in my account. And my Mom was telling me I had to put gas in the car.

Then a group of boys from The Burn (the youth group I lead) were doing skits a'la an after school special. They were very well written and almost like a sitcom. I kept wondering who wrote the skits. The one boy's character hated the spice, cumin, and anything that called for cumin. (Chili, for example.)

All of a sudden I was on a golf course in Europe. It was really dark, though, and it seemed like I was playing night-golf. My Dad and brother were there, too. An Italian guy who owned the golf course was trying to help me out by getting me connected with other course-owners. He had to take me on this gigantic outdoor elevator to bring me there, though, and I didn't know how to operate it. There were loads of people on it, too. Because I didn't know how to operate it I fell off of it and died.

Most Vivid Dreams - Part 1

I've been having the most extensive, vivid dreams. Last night my dream was replete with Europe, my murderous spirit, show-tunes, The Last Supper, and the Postal Service. (Enjoy the trip in to my psyche. Any interpretations welcome.)

In my dream last night I was with some of my roommates from Portugal, a couple youth group kids from here in La Plata, USA, and a few other friends. We were headed on a road trip to get somewhere in Europe. I’m not sure if we'd started in Europe or in America.

On the way, we stopped to see my great uncle, because it was a good resting point on the way. In the dream uncle was an invalid, and was being taken care of by the daughter of one of his closest friends, who lived on the second floor. Uncle couldn’t talk, but he could snore really good. The lady upstairs would often yell down from her bed to hush his loud snores.

It was time for all of the road-trippers to go to bed. We were all sort of camping out in the living room, stuffed like sardines. As we were falling asleep, I was about to close my eyes, and I saw that a girl and guy were crammed on the couch sort of snuggling to sleep. I immediately remembered a prior conversation I’d had with the girl in which she bemoaned how snuggling-boy had been giving her so many confusing mixed signals about their relationship. (The majority of which signals were, “I don’t like you.”)

So, in all of my Jenelle-confontationalism, I said to snuggling-boy from my sleeping bag, “You are such an idiot. You’re just an idiot. Sometime before we leave tomorrow, I'm going to tell you why.”

Now quite annoyed, and unable to sleep, I traveled upstairs. I found a shy Dutch girl, but we couldn’t understand each other enough to speak. She was voraciously reading some novel in Dutch. Another lady from the Netherlands was there, too, and she was crazily multi-lingual. She grabbed a gigantic English/Ancient Greek dictionary, and started translating words from Ancient Greek to English to Dutch for me. Nice lady, she was.

Then Scott and Terri Last (once in Florence, now on their way to work with CAI in my Portugal) wandered in. Terri told me how she’d just spent a week at IHOP, and I flipped out telling her how I’d met with God at IHOP back in September. I was glad they were starting to settle into their new home in Portugal.

I came back downstairs to find that everyone was now awake. Apparently my you-are-an-idiot words to the boy had caused a lot of commotion. (I sort of liked that.)

To the boy I returned and (somewhat) elaborated, “You are either an idiot or just a fool. I think you’re just a foolish idiot.”

The best part was how I then recalled how Jesus said that calling someone a "fool" or "idiot" is the same as us acting in a murderous spirit. And that sobered me. (But I was too irritated to apologize to him.)

And with that, we all took off for our European adventure. We started on a riverboat cruise, in Istanbul or something, and we saw the most amazing sunset with ancient ships strewn against the horizon. I dug for my camera and tried to capture the scene. I failed. The pictures only showed a tenth of the actual view.

We wandered into a hostel and spoke to the man at the reception. There were multiple magazines in all sorts of languages on the shelf behind him. The man was Italian and spoke broken English. When I caught his eye, he grabbed one of the English magazines, came out from behind the counter and started singing a homemade show-tune! He sang acapella, and it was all about how he was going to learn English. (I was amazed at how well he stayed in tune! It was a great song, I wish I could replicate it here.)

He danced as he sang wide-eyed about how all his dreams would soon come true.

As he sang, I saw a live-music video of sorts. There was a catwalk, and a stage, and a curtain that opened. He sang about all of the places in Europe that he'd soon visit, and how his pilgrimmage would help him in his “spiritual journey." As he sang about each city's artwork, the curtain would then open and a life-sized image would float down the catwalk towards me. There were five images, and they were all various famous artistic pieces associated with Christ and the cross. The last one was “The Last Supper.” As that image came towards me, I walked into it.

All of a sudden I entered three different (somewhat hilarious) contemporary versions of the da Vinci's Last Supper. It was like I was on the front of the stage, watching as the actors rehearsed. The one I remember most had all of the disciples dressed as American fraternity boys from the 1950’s, with brightly-colored shirts and slick hair. Some had bow-ties, too. I'm pretty sure Jesus still had his white robe on, though.

When Jesus exited by stage-right, he jumped down into a super-sonic-speed ancient carriage. It was all so fast and dangerous, and I was worried that he got hurt in the jump. But then Tara (who is Young Life Europe’s Regional Administrator…Tara does everything and knows everything), quickly appeared and told me the physics of how these carriages work. And then I calmed down. Jesus would be just fine.

So I jumped into the ancient (but super-sonic-speed) carriage and ended up in Cascais, Portugal. Only it wasn’t just Cascais, but a hybrid of both glitzy Paris and flavorful Italy. I realized that I needed a break to be alone, so I started looking for a cafe to escape in. I rehearsed in my head how I’d ask the barista, “Un cappuccino, per favore” with the proper Italian accent.

But on the way to the cafe, I saw this guy, R.J. in the crowd (who stuck out only because he was about one foot taller than all of the short Southern Europeans.) (R.J. was my best friend from high school's boyfriend in the 10th grade. I haven’t seen him in 10 years.) I was so excited to see another La Platian’s face in Europe that I gave him a gigantic hug. (And proceeded to re-introduce myself to him, in case he didn’t remember me.) R.J. had on a snappy Postal Service uniform, and explained to me that he’d been working for the U.S. Postal Service in Paris, and had just gotten transferred to Cascais.

“Oh!" I said. "You’ll just love it here. I lived here for almost four years. I promise, you’ll love it. It's so beautiful and right here in Portugal.”

And then I remembered how (in real life) the day that I interviewed with the U.S. Postal Service, they told me that once I finished my Masters, I should consider working for the International division…to get a job back in Europe dealing with mail. (The End.) Image from Wikipedia