Masks

I had two dreams recently.

In the first dream, I was in a car, on a road trip with my family.  My brother Mark was at the wheel.  He said to me that he had read the letter I had written, and so had Mom.  He said Mom was concerned that I had inappropriately “raved” my bishop, Bishop B.  The sentence made no sense to me.  I wondered if I had misheard the word.  I asked him, “Raved?”

I was in my bedroom alone.  I was thinking about my relationship with Bishop B.  At first I thought he probably sees me as someone who is sincere but mistaken.  I felt it would only be a matter of time until Bishop B sees me as I am.  But then I wondered if he saw me as a threat to the Church, as a carrier of dangerous ideas that would infect faithful members of the Church.  Was I seen as a pest who must be eliminated from the Church?

I noticed a mosquito lighting on me and trying to bite me.  I brushed it away.  Then I noticed there were more.  I looked around me in my room, and then I noticed an open window above my head.  The mosquitos were coming in through there.  I looked up and saw a vast swarm of mosquitos descending.  The sky was virtually black with them, and the air was full of buzzing.  Some of the mosquitos were huge.  I tried to close the window, but I could not because they were swarming in too quickly.

In the second dream, I saw a tiger man (half man, half tiger).  He was considered by authorities to be a dangerous outlaw.  But now the last day was dawning, and he was an angel of God in disguise.

People were coming to a warehouse to ask for grain.  There were men handing people bagfuls of grain.

I saw myself.  I was enormous – bloated and fat.  My shirt looked like one of the bags that the men had been handing out.  I realized that I was so fat because I was stuffed full of grain.

*****

If we cannot see through the eyes of love, then even the angels of God will appear to us as a descending scourge of hate.

In this world, we wear masks, some our choosing and some not of our choosing.  Some of us wear masks of abundance.  Some of us wear masks of poverty.  Some of us wear masks of love.  Some of us wear masks of the unloved.  But eventually, all masks will come off.  All will be revealed.  And then all we will have left is what we can carry in our hearts:

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.  For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.  But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away...  For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.