The Fruit of the Garden

With a certain amount of regularity, when folks learn that Goran and I have been together for 25+ years now, we get asked, "How do you do it?" I think I had a dream last night that is an answer to that question.

It was a very long dream full of rich symbolism that took me about an hour and a half to write down from beginning to end, but the Cliff's notes version goes like this:

I was paying a visit to a woman most of us in the LGBT Mormon community know, someone regarded as a kind of Elder Stateswoman and Matriarch of the Mormon gays (I don't need to say her name, you all know who I'm talking about) at Oxford University (arguably the world's oldest and most eminent place of learning). After giving me a very strange and delicious fruit to eat (kind of like an apple, but it had a thick, brown husk that I needed to break and tear off first), we conversed as she took me on a walk with a spectacular view of a well-tended Garden. She eventually took her leave of me as she had womanly business to attend to (she met up with some other woman of similar age and rank, and they went off to a gathering of other women). I ended up in the kitchen of a young, married heterosexual couple with young children. Very cool, millennial types who didn't mind hanging out with the gays. While I was there, I noticed some itchy scratchy bumps on my left ring finger (wedding finger). These bumps began to slough off and started hatching into really hideous, nasty, noxious arthropods of varying shapes and sizes and colors, all poisonous and mean. I had a major battle with these evil critters in the kitchen of my friends, but eventually managed to stomp, smash and kill every last one of them. When I looked at my left ring finger again, it was clean and healthy and infection free.

One of the things I've gradually learned about marriage over the years is that in order to be successful in it, you have to do battle with all that is worst in yourself. For gay and lesbian couples, that includes the vicious critter known as internalized homophobia. But there are a whole host of other demons we have to wrestle with that are not unique to us, and that every sensible, solid virtue we ever learned about in Sunday School or Priesthood or Relief Society such as self-mastery, fidelity, and sacrifice stand us in good stead to wrestle. There were some bad, shame-inducing messages in Sunday School too that I have had to unlearn. Please forget everything you ever learned involving metaphors of used chewing gum, ink stains or nails in boards. I might add, however, that in my own personal journey (can't, of course, speak for others), one of the least helpful (most damaging?) messages "out there" in the world was the message that all of "those values" that we learned at church are bourgeois, heterosexual values that don't really apply to us. It takes a while to sort out the good stuff from the dreck.  But for the most part, my Mormon upbringing has stood me in good stead to find a kind of happiness that is beyond words to describe.

I want to say that that Elder Stateswoman Matriarch in my dream actually stood for none other than Mother Eve, who gave me a certain fruit to eat, knowing that I needed the knowledge of Good and Evil that would come from it, so I could successfully learn the lessons I had come here to learn. The well tended gardens of Oxford University were symbolic of our post-Garden-of-Eden cultivation and mastery of the lone and dreary world. The specific site of learning for me was a kitchen associated with marriage (the kitchen of a married couple, kitchens being in many ways the heart of married life). My commitment to my husband (symbolized by my wedding finger) engaged me in a battle with "my own demons" that was quite scary at moments but ultimately ended in success, health and happiness.

At least, that's what I think that dream meant.

If any man will do...

Last night I had a dream. In the dream, I saw Christ speaking, saying, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." After I woke up, I looked it up... John 7:17.

What a beautiful, happy, peaceful feeling I had during this dream! Thinking about it makes me yearn to be in the Savior's presence!

I had a few thoughts about it as I reflected on Jesus' words. First of all, the most important things about the Gospel we know from doing. So in any Gospel-related study we do, that gives us something to look for and to focus on: "How can I put this into practice in my life?" I think that can be a useful way of figuring out what is wheat and what is chaff. I definitely have a testimony of that, because there is so much peace and joy in my life that has come from practicing very simple, very basic Gospel principles.

The second reflection I had is that this is such a beautiful and simple hermeneutic. What is God's will in relation to homosexuality? There's a lot of contention and commotion over this question. I would suggest that we already have a lot of combined wisdom in relation to this question. Our experience, our "doing" is our teacher. Our various experiences have given us the most valuable data to "know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."

To me this doctrine allows us to put our minds at rest, to not be afraid. If something is working for you, giving you greater knowledge, keep doing it! If it's not working, if your gears are grinding, let it go... The truth is in a different direction.

Thoughts?

We Have Dreamed a Dream, and There is No Interpreter of It

At the April 2012 General Conference, Elder Richard G. Scott spoke on the topic, "How to Obtain Revelation and Inspiration for Your Personal Life." His talk was the topic of our priesthood lesson last Sunday.

At the time he gave this talk, I was interested to hear him discuss the role that dreams can play as a source of personal revelation. He said:

Revelation can also be given in a dream when there is an almost imperceptible transition from sleep to wakefulness. If you strive to capture the content immediately, you can record great detail, but otherwise it fades rapidly. Inspired communication in the night is generally accompanied by a sacred feeling for the entire experience. The Lord uses individuals for whom we have great respect to teach us truths in a dream because we trust them and will listen to their counsel. It is the Lord doing the teaching through the Holy Ghost. However, He may in a dream make it both easier to understand and more likely to touch our hearts by teaching us through someone we love and respect.

When it is for the Lord’s purposes, He can bring anything to our remembrance. That should not weaken our determination to record impressions of the Spirit. Inspiration carefully recorded shows God that His communications are sacred to us. Recording will also enhance our ability to recall revelation. Such recording of direction of the Spirit should be protected from loss or intrusion by others.

I've been keeping a dream journal since January 2006, in response to a prompting of the Spirit I felt around that time.

Many of the dreams I've recorded have seemed bizarre or whimsical, and certainly weren't "accompanied by a sacred feeling." Even these dreams, however, have given me insight. I definitely have had many experiences with dreams that were sacred, that communicated profound spiritual truths.

Perhaps it is because of the special challenges associated with being gay in a society and a culture that misunderstand and are hostile toward gay people that I have felt a particular need for personal revelation and guidance. There isn't a day I feel I can afford to go without the presence and guidance of the Spirit.

Dreams and understanding or interpreting dreams is something I have a particular interest in. I have shared quite a few dreams on this blog, especially those that have given me insight either into the general human condition or my specific situation as a gay, believing Latter-day Saint that I have felt were appropriate to share. I recently started a new blog devoted to the subject of dreams and dream interpretation.

It's actually possible to buy books on dreams and dream interpretation. There are "dream dictionaries" available that purport to offer the meanings of dream symbols. I've actually read a fair number of books on the subject and have a few dream dictionaries in my library (some of which I consider nearly useless and others not completely useless).

My approach to this is that the meaning of any given dream symbol can be very individual or very unique. I've found that paying attention to dreams has actually helped me get a sense of my own personal "dream vocabulary."

The feelings that we experience in conjunction with dreams are usually clues to the meaning of a particular dream, though not always in the way we think. Nightmares or "bad dreams" are not always bad. They may actually be giving us keys to understand and work our way through the most debilitating fears in our lives.

I've often found that the best way to figure out a dream is just to talk through it.

Thus my new blog, devoted to discussing and understanding dreams.

Shibboleths

I've been traveling a lot this year. Three trips to Utah. Two trips to Washington, DC. Two trips to Chicago. A drive to Iowa and then St. Louis and then Memphis. Camping on the borders of South Dakota. A weekend in New York. Is that for real? No wonder it feels lately like home is this stopping place in between trips.

Much of this travel has involved spending time with LGBT Mormons and allies, building and strengthening a once very fragmented and scattered community now at a seemingly pivotal juncture. The LGBT Saints are gathering. Last weekend I was in Washington, DC because of work, but I spent Saturday evening at an Affirmation Family Home Evening at the Washington Temple Visitors Center, I attended the Washington DC 3rd Ward Sunday morning, and then spent the rest of the day meeting and planning with Affirmation leaders. Monday morning was an opportunity to answer emails and finish some long overdue Affirmation-related work. At one o'clock, I tore myself away and I permitted myself to go on pilgrimage, first to the Holocaust Museum, then to the World War II Memorial, then to the Lincoln Memorial.

Monday night, I'd invited myself to stay with friends and fellow Saints James and Chip at their apartment in Arlington, VA. They kindly accommodated me. It's hard to adequately describe my feelings during this visit.

James is part of Affirmation's International Leadership Team. He's active in his ward in Arlington and has a strong testimony of the Church, and he and Chip have created this amazing, loving partnership. James had organized the Saturday Affirmation Family Home Evening, and he and Chip both showed up. Chip is not a Mormon. (It seems that gay Mormons in relationship with other gay Mormons is the very, very rare exception, not the rule. Gay Mormons in same-sex relationships tend to be ecumenical and intercultural in their relationships.) But Chip is incredibly supportive of James' involvement in the Church and in his work with Affirmation. Because it was Monday night, I was invited to participate in their "family night" and Chip offered a closing prayer that would have melted any missionary's heart.

Chip had to work late, so while we were waiting for him before family night, James and I had a chance to talk, sharing stories and reflecting on what it means to us to be gay and Mormon, and to discuss our work in Affirmation. James shared spiritual experiences with me that had confirmed to him that he and Chip were meant to become a family, that being together was where God wanted them to be. He said to me: "I prayed about this, but it was very clear to me."  (Chip later confirmed that he felt the same way -- he had been praying for years to find a particular kind of life partner, and James had been the answer to those prayers.)

And yet, James has a testimony of the Church. He knows the Church is true. He knows its leaders are called by God, and that the priesthood keys they hold are real. I understood well the dilemmas and the awkwardness and the power of holding these things simultaneously. James and I both participate in a rapidly growing group organized under the auspices of Affirmation called the "Prepare" Group, which includes individuals in every region of the country who have testimonies of the Church, are staying active, and who are also in -- or seeking, or supportive of -- same-sex relationships.

After Chip arrived, we spent our family night on an outing to the Martin Luther King Memorial and the FDR Memorial. I told them about what I'd seen at the Holocaust Museum, and we talked about what the American Dream meant to us: freedom and interconnection; unity and diversity. We each shared our sense of faith. We finally retired to their place, played with their cat Frankie, had ice cream, and ended the evening with prayer. 

The Spirit was present in a sweet, powerful way.

*****

That night I had a strange dream. I recorded it in my dream journal:

I was attending a new ward in some Midwestern city. I was invited to attend a session at the temple. At first, I was a bit confused. I was not sure how I could be allowed to enter the temple proper. I arrived at the temple, and I entered a large sanctuary area. I felt a bit reticent about entering, but my bishop, a woman, was accompanying me, and as we found our seats she reassured me that it was OK. The sanctuary area was shaped like a square, and there were rows of wooden chairs ascending in stadium fashion up all four walls of the sanctuary. I asked my sister bishop how it was possible that I could be allowed in the temple, and she said to me, “Look, see? It's OK for you to be here. Even these Jewish brothers are here in the temple.” I looked up and saw an entire section where there were orthodox Jewish men, dressed in black suits, with beards and hair in the orthodox Jewish fashion, and black, broad-brimmed hats. When I saw them, I set my mind at rest.

The temple ceremony began, and it was a dance. We stood up and moved into the center area of the sanctuary which was a great, open, square area. We were standing in concentric circles, and we began to dance, our arms crossed, and our hands clasping the hands of those on either side of us. The dance involved stepping side-to-side, back and forth with one foot crossing the other as we went side to side in a great circle. The dance steps seemed a bit complicated to me at first, but I was watching the others and doing as they did, and I was able to learn the dance fairly quickly. We were dancing to heartbreakingly beautiful music played by a klezmer band, and as the pace of the music slowly picked up we kept up with the rhythm, dancing faster and faster. There was great joy. People smiled and laughed and cried tears of joy. I asked myself, How could it be that we are dancing in the temple? How is it that dances are allowed in the temple? And then I remembered that the Saints danced in the temple in Nauvoo in the early days of the Church with Brigham Young. They danced and danced each night until the small hours of the morning.

My sister bishop and I eventually left the temple. She asked me to help her run some errands in the ward. The streets of the city were beautiful: broad streets lined with trees and small, white houses. The streets were arranged in a grid pattern around the temple. My sister bishop led me to the home of a widow who needed some sort of assistance. We arrived at her home but no one was there. The sister bishop said it was OK, we just needed to pick up some bills that needed to be paid. She knew where they were, and she had a key to let us into the widow sister's home.

I accompanied her inside, and was meditating quietly as the sister bishop found what she needed to find. I was still marveling that I had been allowed to go inside the temple. 

That was when I woke up. I recalled the dream with force and clarity. It filled me with happiness and peace. I knew I had to write it down right away. I climbed down out of bed and found my cell phone and looked at the time: 3:51 a.m. I turned on my computer and started writing the dream, and as I wrote, tears flowed down my cheeks.

I climbed back up into bed. (The bed in the guest room was the top of a bunk bed.) I still couldn't sleep. I felt prompted to pray. So I started to pray, and as I did, I realized that the Lord had given me -- in a dream -- a vision of Zion. I was very humbled, very aware of my many deep, deep imperfections and flaws, but aware that part of faith in the Atonement is to go forward in spite of one's flaws, trusting in God more than we fear our imperfections.

I felt so excited, I wanted to go right away and wake up my hosts and tell them what I had dreamed: that I had caught a vision of Zion, and that I -- that we! -- would be there, in the temple, dancing with the Saints.

*****

In the past year I have gotten to meet many LGBT Latter-day Saints with strong testimonies. When I say "strong testimonies," I mean that they know the Church is true and they are willing to live that truth in some way that requires making sacrifices or facing fears and challenges. These are individuals who are transgender, who are living the gender they know they are. These are gay men and lesbians who are in the same-sex relationships they know God intended them for. We are praying, studying, living the Word of Wisdom. We are going to Church. We are serving in various ways in our wards, usually very humbly and without formal callings, because many of us are not permitted to hold formal callings, or if we are allowed callings we are allowed only the humblest of callings. Some of us are excommunicated, and some of us are allowed to keep our membership. Many have started going to Church despite strong fears of rejection or misunderstanding. We are laying down  weapons of self defense, and going back, hoping that we will be received by the Saints as Saints. We are looking for Zion.

I was born in 1963 and grew up in a generation when LGBT people were accustomed to being subjected by members of the Church to a series of shibboleths. What I mean by that is being told, for instance, "If you're in a same-sex relationship, you're not following the prophet and you're not really a Saint and you don't belong here." And we have been subjected to a series of humiliations and have experienced forms of rejection that literally broke us. We usually experienced this rejection in its most intense form from those who ought to have understood us best -- our closest friends and family. Often we pushed those who ought to have known us best furthest out, because we ourselves feared what was in us; because we assumed that to be fully known would mean to be hated; because we ourselves found it impossible to believe that we ought to believe in ourselves.

Our Church leaders remind us again and again that "the Church's doctrine is not changing and will not change." Two of our leaders reminded us of that again at the most recent General Conference. But fortunately, what is changing is the attitudes of the Saints. Not always. I'm still hearing all too frequent reports of the old shibboleths. But with stunning frequency I'm also hearing growing numbers of reports of LGBT Saints who are going back, and who are being told, "I'm not here to judge you. If you want to come back, and you want to worship God with us, you are welcome."

What we know in our heart of hearts doesn't always seem to line up with every utterance of the brethren. Often, we are the ones who feel most confused about that. Our fellow Saints don't know how that works and neither do we.

What we do know is that it's for us to move forward the best we can, in faith.

The Lord has a place for us in Zion. It's not a separate-but-equal place. It's not an inferior place where we get to be lonely and everybody else gets to be fulfilled. It's a place in Zion where we are valued and we have family and we will be blessed, just like everybody else. That's what Zion is.

But it takes faith to get there. And we have a long journey ahead of us.

Surviving the Crash

I had a very peculiar dream last night that Göran and I were in a plane crash. Our plane hit an unexpected storm shortly after it had taken off from MSP International Aiport, and went down somewhere in western Wisconsin.

In my dream, I was watching (from outside my body) paramedics place my body in an ambulance and take it to a hospital. I was very aware that if I (my consciousness/my spirit?) were not quickly reattached to my body, my body would die.

I stayed very close to the paramedics, and I kept saying, "When are you going to reattach me to my body?" But the paramedics didn't seem to be paying much attention to me or even noticing me. I figured they were busy.

After we reached the hospital, they laid my body on some kind of cart in a big room. I went over to it to look at it, and it looked to me as if it were "wilting," the way flowers wilt after you cut them, if you don't put them in water. I was particularly studying my hands, seeing how crumpled up and small they looked, and I thought, "It's probably already too late to save my hands. There's probably too much neurological damage."

I gradually realized that I was probably actually dead, and it was time to go find Göran and move on.

*****

I was struck by how weirdly similar this dream was to pop cultural portrayals of the after death experience in movies and TV, like, say, the movie The Sixth Sense. About a year ago, I shared my review of James Hillman's book, The Dream and the Underworld, in which Hillman argues that Greco-Roman underworld mythology was actually the product of dreams. Are our pop culture portrayals of after-death experiences also a product of dreams? Or was my dream the product of pop cultural portrayals? Another one of the many mysterious questions I'm filing away for future reference.

I told this dream to my husband this morning, and he was actually pretty appalled. I said, "I had a strange dream last night." And after I described it, he said, "That wasn't a dream that was a nightmare!" But oddly, I did not experience it as a scary dream. I felt quite calm and at peace throughout. The feeling I experienced upon discovering I was dead was more one of surprise than fear or anger or regret.

I woke up thinking, basically, "Oh, I guess I can survive a plane crash, even if I die in it."

On Living Death

A bizarre post inspired by a bizarre dream.

The George Romero classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) spawned a whole genre of zombie apocalypse movies that have continued to grow in popularity to this day. Romero established, among other things, the movie precedent of killing zombies by destroying their brains. That zombie movie convention always puzzled me a bit. As a kid, I was accustomed to the Brahm Stoker version of living dead. Vampires could only be killed by mystical means: a rosewood stake through the heart, exposure to sunlight, or immersion in running water. This is because mystical forces had raised them from the dead. You couldn't kill a vampire by conventional means, by, say, shooting it through the brain or the heart with a gun.

Maybe that's because Brahm Stoker wrote his classic in that quaint period of history preceding our day, when most of his readers believed in God. Romero knew that if his living dead were empowered by mystical forces, no modern viewers would believe in them. So he relied on science to explain his living dead. Modern-day zombies are the result of genetically engineered super viruses, Haitian pharmacology, extraterrestrial mind control, or bizarre mutations. Since the modern, scientific human soul resides in the brain, that's how you kill zombies. By destroying their brains.

For what it's worth, modern-day movie vampires, despite the best efforts of Brahm Stoker and Montague Summers, have also been crammed into the modern scientific paradigm.  It used to be that good, old-fashioned vampires were literally immobilized by the rising of the sun, the celestial symbol of God's power.  A vampire during the day was dead, confined to his coffin, and could come back to life only with the waning of day and the return of night, symbol of the rising powers of darkness and evil.  Modern day vampires are not affected by the divine power of the sun, but rather, by U.V. radiation, an aspect of the sun's power that was revealed to us only by modern science. Give them a broad-brimmed hat and some SPF 30 suntan lotion, and they're good.  Modern day vampires like to hang out with their human friends during the day, and go shopping at the mall. They're sexy and chic and they live forever, and, hey! Who wouldn't want to be one? (We hates you forever, Stephenie Meyer. Forever.)

I generally prefer my horror movies to have a more supernatural or mystical twist to them. I'm not a big fan of the blood and gore that is stock fare for zombie apocalypse movies (and for most modern horror movies, for that matter), though I admit I have somewhat enjoyed the TV series Walking Dead, mostly for its human elements.  I love Hershel.

But there is a way of looking at the Romero-style zombie apocalypse genre in more mystical terms. I didn't discover it until I read Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Mysticism, written by an anonymous French Catholic mystic in the latter half of the 20th century. In his entries on "The Wheel" and "The Devil," he describes mortal existence as a serpentine coil, sort of like human intestines, or like the human brain. In his reading of tarot symbolism, he sees the brain as representing the summit of human achievement, both for good and for ill. This is where Romero and Christian mysticism meet: the brain is the summit of human achievement.  But for modern science, the brain is the highest summit we can hope for.  For Christians, the brain is the bottom-most rung in a ladder that ascends high into the Heavens, if we're willing to use it in God's service.  For Christians, there is life after the brain.

*****

I had a zombie apocalypse dream last night.  Zombies were overrunning the world, dining on the flesh of the remaining living humans, who were badly outnumbered, and not faring so well even backed up by modern tanks, artillery, and special security forces.  The zombies were eating everybody: man, woman and child, soldier and civilian alike. Humans would soon lose the battle and then the zombies, presumably, would run out of food.

The zombies were eating everybody, that is, but me. Somehow they didn't seem to notice me. I glided past the battle front where people were being eaten, behind zombie lines.  For many long miles I sped along, until I reached the zombie apocalypse epicenter.  There the zombie forces were being commanded by a zombie general, who was 8 to 10 feet tall, and was dressed in full Nazi/SS regalia.  There were two living, uneaten humans there: a doctor in a white lab coat, and a woman who was being held prisoner by the doctor for some nefarious reason.  I then realized it was the doctor who had started all of this, and who was in control of the whole zombie military operation.  The giant Nazi Zombie General reported to him.

One thing I noticed about the zombies in my dream was that shooting them in the head or bashing their brains out would clearly have no impact, because their brains had already exploded, and were hanging out the sides of their skulls like pink, fleshy dreadlocks. Their guts were also exploded, their intestines draped out in front of them like aprons. These zombies would not be killed by any mundane, conventional means. (Sorry for the graphic imagery. I don't like watching it in movies, but apparently I dream about it.)

In another part of this dream, there was a conduit to Heaven, like a great, serene pillar of light between Heaven and earth, to which I had access.  Perhaps that's why I wasn't scared of the zombies or the Undead Nazi General or the doctor.  Though I knew it would be important to rescue the captive living woman.

I know.  Weird.  But I woke up strangely hopeful.

The Painful Nature of Change

No, this post isn't about the one-step-forward-one-step-back process by which the Boy Scouts will gradually embrace gay members and leaders. Nor is it about the lamentations currently being provoked among conservative defenders of heterosexual marriage by what looks like a sudden avalanche of support for gay marriage among both Republicans and Democrats. This post is about change far more personal than that.

I should say, parenthetically however, that while I think extending marriage rights to same-sex couples and allowing equal access to the Boy Scouts are both the right things to do, I dislike rhetorical flourishes that I occasionally hear in the media implying that majority support for these things is proof that they are good. Depending on what side you are on of any issue, your interpretation of the moral meaning of majority support is going to differ, especially as that support fluctuates.

Also, as long as I digress in this vein, I should add that while I appreciate the enthusiastic sentiment that progress for American minorities is inevitable, I don't share it. I believe neither in the inevitability of progress, nor in the inevitability of regress. I am a historian. The history of the 20th century, with its Hitler and its Stalin and its Hiroshima and its Vietnam, was proof that progress is not inevitable, and majorities often do not stand on the side of it. Everything progresses or regresses according to our collective moral choices and efforts. And we can never abdicate personal moral responsibility because a majority supports a thing or opposes a thing.

And change, even good change, even progress, is painful.

*****

Last night I had a dream that our little home here in Minneapolis was in chaos. My mother, who I am afraid we are slowly losing to Alzheimer's, was living with us, sharing Göran's and my bedroom. She was calmly sleeping through my whole dream.  A lesbian Mormon friend of mine had moved in to help us care for her.  A homeless family had moved into my office.  Our kitchen was in chaos, because my lesbian Mormon friend had brought bulk quantities of food to help cook for us; the rest of the house was in chaos because our guest homeless family had left their possessions scattered among ours, and were interchangeably using our stuff and theirs.  My husband was asleep in bed next to my mom, and I was waiting for him to wake up any second and blow his lid when he saw our nice, tidy abode converted into all this madness.

As I took a midnight tour of the house, I noticed the chaos increasing rather than decreasing.  The house was full of men.  There was a new addition to the house that looked like a pub, where men were hanging out and talking and getting ready to go out and perform tasks I was supposed to organize.  There were work crews tearing down walls, in the stairway, in the upstairs hall, in our bedroom, in our sun porch.

At first I was alarmed by what I saw.  The men waiting to be sent out on assignments didn't look very reputable to me.  And I was certain that work crews weren't needed to be tearing down all our walls. But when I confronted a work crew leader, he showed me a window where the wood was literally crumbling because it was so rotten.  The work was necessary.  And as they tore down walls, they revealed old possessions I'd forgotten I had: old photographs of me and Göran as a young couple, falling in love and enjoying ourselves; an old lamp I'd always loved; and a little ceramic statuette of the prophet Joseph Smith kneeling in the Sacred Grove.  The tearing down of the walls was teaching me important things about myself.

The statuette was particularly interesting because I couldn't remember if I had made it myself, or if I had bought it.  I looked for clues on the statuette, but found only sacred words that had been engraved on it in hidden places.  This portrayal of Joseph made him look like he was in a kind of agony.  (There was both suffering and rapture in the experience of the First Vision.)  I realized this was my most treasured possession.

As I interacted with the men waiting for assignments, I realized we had important work to do together, and I was grateful for their presence.

I remember thinking, "Göran is going to kill me when he wakes up and sees all this."  But I also remember thinking, "This is all eventually going to work out for the best, one way or the other."

*****

Last week real life felt particularly chaotic and painful.  I had a miserable cold, but no other choice than to put in several 15-hour days because of craziness at work.  And there was teaching.  (I gave my annual Mormon history lectures through a fog of sinus pain and congestion.)  The foster son didn't stop being a typical teenage boy for all that (both the good and the bad of that).  And when I wanted to collapse after work, there was Affirmation work, getting ready for our next international leadership conference in Salt Lake City.  I felt overwhelmed.  I collapsed after my work day ended 11 p.m. Friday night.  Saturday and most of Sunday I felt catatonic, trying not to get above the horizontal axis if I could help it.  Monday, was still feeling my way back to normality.

And I felt frustrated last weekend, because I felt like I've already spent too much of my life "recovering" since my bike accident last August.  I don't want to spend any more of my life recovering!  I half wondered if dreaming about work men tearing the walls out of the upstairs of my house wasn't about surgeons cutting open parts of my skull last October.  In dreams, our house is almost always our body.  I still don't know what to make of those two numbish soft spots on the right side of my head.  (I still can't sleep on my right side because of the discomfort it causes.)

I woke up humbled this morning.  Aware of my weaknesses and inadequacies.  Realizing there's a lot of fixing up I still need.

*****

The part of the dream that most comforted me was the part about that ceramic statuette of the prophet Joseph Smith.  The fact that I didn't know whether I had made it myself as a child (I got my testimony at the age of 8) or whether I obtained it from somewhere else made sense to me.  There is a kind of existential doubt we all wrestle with at one point or another in relation to the profound spiritual experiences of our lives.  Did I make this up?  Or is it real?  Did it come from without?

The only answer I got to that question from my dream is that there were sacred words of power engraved on it.  There is power in my testimony that I can't deny.  And the dream was a reminder to me: tear down the walls of your mind and your body, and in the deepest part of me, it is still there, my testimony of the Gospel.  And it is my most treasured possession.

I've realized that my life derives meaning not from comfort and order, but from truth.  If my life has worth, it can only be because it is lived in relation to some truth.  Truth demands sacrifice, and sacrifice opens us to more truth.  And that means there's always going to be work to do.  And that work will often plunge my life into chaos, and make things difficult and messy.

And I have to figure out how to do important work that opens my life to chaos, and still hold on to all the pieces of my life that matter most: family, friends, community, social justice.  We have an obligation to try, even when to try is risky and messy and scary.

That's how we grow and progress and become something better.

Life's Greatest Treasure

Having recorded over 1000 dreams, I've noticed that certain dream symbols seem to go together. It seems whenever I have a dream involving a museum, there are always ghosts involved. I suppose it makes a certain kind of sense. Museums and ghosts both have to do with the past, with things that are dead and gone, but that still retain a kind of half-life through memory and through history. Since I am a historian, it makes sense that I would have dreams that involve both museums and ghosts! Except that usually when I have these dreams they're kind of scary. This was certainly true of the dream I had this past Monday night. The dream culminated with me and Göran and all of the inhabitants of some unnamed Hawaiian island gathered in front of a museum that was haunted.

In this dream, the powerful evil spirit that possessed the museum had been pursuing and harassing me throughout the dream. Göran and I had to been on a flight to Hawaii, when the evil spirit had possessed the navigation equipment of the airplane and caused it to crash into the ocean. Everyone on board drowned except for Göran and me. Later, out of paranoia that the spirit might possess anybody, I attacked somebody, resulting in a fight and then a pursuit to the shores the ocean.

As I reflected more deeply on the dream symbolism, I realized that the museum, which from the outside looked like an enormous mansion, represented the powers that rule this world. In some Gnostic literature, the ocean represents worldly, material consciousness. So the evil spirit trying to drown me and Göran by crashing us into the ocean would represent the dangers of losing one's connection with higher consciousness or the Spirit. Paranoia, preemptive attacks, retaliation, and escalation of violence in the dream were symbolic of the struggles for power and the vicious cycles of material existence minus higher consciousness.

Following the plane crash Göran and I swam to shore. If the ocean represented drowning in material consciousness, then the island in Hawaii would have represented the possibility of human enlightenment. (Hello James Kent!) At a key point in the dream we arrived at a hotel, a temporary residence. When we reported that we had lost all our possessions when our plane crashed into the ocean, we were told that we had insurance that would replace everything of value.  What happened next is what got my attention. The woman asked me what the value of my material possessions had been, and I told her I had had nothing of value -- except for a few dollars in my wallet, which I still had with me in my back pocket. Then she asked Göran what had been the value of his possessions, and he told her $27,000. She promptly handed him $27,000 to replace what had been lost.

When I told our foster son M. this part of the dream, he said, "Oh, that's because Göran is more materialistic than you!" That's what I had thought at first too. I can't deny that Göran has frequently accused me of being a "monk" and of caring too little our material possessions and surroundings. He likes to have his Louis Vuitton bags and designer clothes! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is not what the dream was actually about. It was that number that got my attention. Twenty-seven thousand is three to the power of three times one thousand. Numerologically, then, 27,000 would represent the ultimate spiritual treasure in infinite abundance (3 symbolizing spirit, 3 to the power of 3 symbolizing ultimate spirit, and 1000 symbolizing endless abundance). I realized that Göran "having worth" valued at 27,000 symbolized that he is my treasure. It is in my relationship with him that I will find an endless abundance of spiritual treasure. 

So the dream seemed to be telling me: Pay attention to your relationship with Göran! Guard it, protect it and stay close to him! The point in my dream when I succumbed to paranoia and got involved in escalating warfare with angry adversaries was right after I had parted ways momentarily with Göran. He had gone "upstairs" in the hotel and I "downstairs." After my adversaries pursued me to the ocean shore, leaving me wondering if I would be forced back into the waters, Göran arrived and the adversaries dispersed.  The conscious thought in my dream was that Göran would protect me. Or, rather, the way forward for me is to stay true to him and to our relationship.

The dream also seemed to be telling me that worldly adversity could not take this treasure from me. Though the plane crash had threatened to destroy us and take away everything of value to us, ultimately we had "insurance" that prevented that from happening. No one and nothing can take our love away from us or detract from what we have together. (No one but us, that is!)

There was a message in the dream, I think, about material possessions. It was not unlike Jesus' teachings on the subject. If we focused our lives on what really mattered, we would have enough.  I had a few dollars in my wallet; Göran's $27,000 would be more than enough for us to meet our needs on the island.

The end of my dream was fascinating to me partly because of its open-endedness.  After a plane crash and after nearly being driven back into the ocean by a deadly conflict, I was gathered with all the inhabitants of the island (a symbol of the world, of all the inhabitants of the world). Everyone was there, including my erstwhile adversaries. We were contemplating the haunted museum together, deciding whether or not to go inside.

At the gate of the museum was some kind of sacred shrine, with a figure inside of sky blue and tan. (It made me think of the Virgin Mary.  It could have been Sophia, divine Wisdom.)  The shrine reminded me that we had a choice: We could choose to go inside the mansion/museum, or we could choose to leave. 

This is the choice we make every day, between the world and the Spirit. We eschew the world by worrying less about things, and by trying not to become obsessed with status and security. We embrace the Spirit by paying attention to what our real treasure is, by trusting that nothing of true value can ever be taken away from us, and by investing our lives in what matters. (Others!)

Mormon Matriarchs and Inverting Our Worldviews

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, I had a dream about attending a family reunion which was hosted by the many great matriarchs of my family.  My grandmother was preeminent among them, but she was surrounded by many of my great aunts.  (Almost all of these great matriarchs except one --  my Great Aunt Helen -- have all passed on to the other side of the veil.)  They were teaching us various arts and crafts.  I was working on a history project, writing about some great early twentieth-century Mormon apostle.  Someone like James E. Talmage, though I couldn't clearly remember his name.  But as I sat in the arts and crafts room where my family was being taught by my grandmother and all my great aunts, I realized that the wife of this apostle, a woman named "Cornelia Roads West," was actually a much more important and influential figure in early Mormonism, so I decided to re-focus my historical research and write about her instead.

That was Sunday.

*****

This morning I had a rather different dream.  It involved some blockbuster movie with grand special effects and a heart-warming story that everybody in the world wanted to go see.  I call it "The Green Movie," because it was a fantasy film whose color pallet was predominantly green.  Göran and I were on our way to see the movie, though I had a story collection project that I was working on all along the way, writing and collecting people's stories.  I worked on the story project on the bus on the way to the theater, and then in the theater lobby while we were waiting to be seated.  Finally we went into the theater and started watching, but I realized that I had left my story-telling work out in the lobby.  I got up and left the movie and reclaimed my work project and started working on it.

I left the theater and took a long journey on an isolated road, until I reached a cottage in the countryside where there were lots of LDS Church members who had gathered to talk and share stories.  It was a place full of life and warmth and love.  I realized, this was where I needed to be to do my project.  I stayed there for a while until two guys dressed in Mormon missionary suits arrived, to tell us how homosexuality could be overcome or transcended.  But I realized they were fake missionaries.  Their suits were the wrong color (grey) and made of polyester, and they didn't have name tags.  After they left, I caught up with them and spoke with them some more.  I realized they were longing for human contact, so I hugged them, and realized that they were starved for physical affection.

I went back to the movie theater where I had left Göran, but found myself on the other side of the screen.  There were quite a few people gathered there.  One of them was a friend of mine who is a performance artist (who happens to be Asian American and a woman).  We could see the images of the Green Movie being projected onto the screens, but we saw the inversion of them because we were looking at them from the back.  From there I could see that the images weren't green, but black and white.  Through a hole in the screen, I could see my husband Göran and some gay Mormon friends of mine raptly watching the film.  I started waving to them, and managed to get their attention, and was trying to encourage them to come over to my side of the movie screen.

That was this morning.

*****

These were very different dreams, but I think they were about basically the same thing.  Both dreams addressed the question of how I need to live my life and tell my story.

Both dreams were about the beauty and wonder of life, first of all.  Both dreams took me to settings that were home-like, places full of people who interacted with each other as family, loved each other, and spent time together socializing, telling stories and creating art.  In the first dream, that place was the home where my matriarchal family reunion was taking place, and in the second dream it was at the cottage in the countryside where members of the LDS Church had gathered to socialize -- away from the hustle and bustle of the city and a blockbuster movie.

Both dreams were also about authenticity, and the challenge of finding authenticity and living authentically.  In the first dream, the great examples set by the matriarchs of my LDS family helped me realize that I was trying to write the wrong history of the Church, that I was focusing on a popular male figure when I should in fact realize that true understanding of Church history would be to see it through the eyes of his wife, "Cornelia Roads West."  ("Roads West," I think, is an allusion to the pioneer trail that shaped early Mormonism.  Is "Cornelia" the female version of the biblical "Cornelius," the figure who represented the opening of the Gospel to the Gentiles?)

In the second dream, there were two "inauthentic" stories I found myself debunking: a worldly blockbuster movie that entranced everybody with special effects and that was supposed to be all about life (filmed in a green color pallet), but in reality was superficial, 2-dimensional and grey.  It was a counterfeit of the real life people were supposed to discover outside of a movie theater.  There was a second "inauthentic" story of how homosexuality could be overcome or transcended, presented by two Mormon-missionary-like characters who turned out not to be real missionaries, and who were starved for real, authentic human affection, which I offered them in the form of physical hugs.

In that second dream, real life was to be found in live human interactions among other Saints, and "on the other side of the movie screen" where we could be actors, not passive viewers of a counterfeit version of life that's sold to us by popular culture.

*****

Many people harshly criticize me for my desire to be actively involved in the Mormon Church.  But I continue to insist that involvement in the Church is the single most important commitment I make as a disciple of Jesus Christ because living the Gospel is about real human relationships.  The Church is not some abstract notion.  It is real relationships with real people, and with a real, living God who has interacted us within the confines of human history.  When we commit deeply to those relationships in the Church, we enter into a journey of mutual learning with our fellow Saints.  A "journey of mutual learning" is how I would characterize the entire Plan of Salvation.  So the Gospel is about the Church and the Church about the Gospel.

I think the reason people are upset about my commitment to the Church is because there are false narratives/inauthentic narratives floating around that present particular ideas of what the Church is and/or is supposed to be.  In embracing the Church, do I embrace false narratives about the Church?  Absolutely not.  At the heart of the Gospel is the task of sorting truth from error, of finding the real narrative.  My second dream in particular reminded me that there are multiple inauthentic narratives.  Some originate from popular culture, some from within the Church. Rejecting one inauthentic narrative doesn't necessitate embracing another.

Please note that the "false church history" in my first dream was a story that I was writing.  It's not that the Church was false, or that "Church history" generally speaking is somehow "false."  It is we who create false understandings and narratives, we who are in need of correctives that come to us from life authentically lived in the Spirit.

Do I know what the "true" narrative is?  I think the answer to this is a resounding "No."  The real narrative is not a narrative per se, but life itself.  The real, live relationships with other human beings.  We learn the truth in the doing, in the being, in the loving.  The inauthenticity in the story of the fake Mormon missionaries was revealed in a human hug.  The inauthenticity in the blockbuster movie was revealed by going to the other side of the movie screen, the part of the stage where people become actors instead of audience.  The inauthenticity in Church history I had been trying to write in my first dream was revealed through the creation of art that the matriarchs in my family were teaching me.

We learn the truth, in other words, by staying lovingly committed to one another.

Two Book of Mormon-based Questions for Mitt Romney

Last night I dreamed I was on vacation with my family in eastern Finland, at my Uncle Vate's cabin.  My parents had invited Mitt Romney to join us there, and he had accepted.  (This part of the dream was not too far beyond the realm of possibility, as my parents actually know Governor Romney from when he was their Stake President in eastern Massachusetts.)

Göran and I were having an enjoyable time, relaxing with my Finnish cousins in sauna.  There were next door neighbors who had come over for sauna as well, and I was conversing with them in Finnish.  That was when Romney arrived.

He seemed relaxed and at home with my family.  He and my dad had been chatting in a friendly manner.  I felt this was a great opportunity to have a heart-to-heart talk with the presidential candidate, so I asked him if I might ask his thoughts on two questions that had been weighing on me of late.

Now, Mitt Romney and I definitely find ourselves on different parts of the political spectrum.  I plan to vote for his opponent in November.  But in my dream I felt no political animus toward him at all.  The questions I had for him were more motivated by the common faith that we share as Latter-day Saints.  They were real questions I have for myself, that I was interested in hearing what Mitt Romney's take on them might be, since as a political leader he might have particular insight into them.

My questions were actually questions posed in the Book of Mormon related to the moral challenges of wealth and power.

The Book of Mormon narrative presents a particular problem of human nature.  When human beings face adversity, it typically humbles us.  We recognize our limits and our weaknesses and our common humanity.  We recognize our need for God, and we repent.  When we repent, we then build our lives and our societies on righteous principles of restraint and compassion.  And as we do this, we begin to prosper.  Unfortunately, just as adversity has the effect of humbling us, prosperity has the effect of hardening us.  We begin to emphasize invidious differences -- on the basis of race or ancestry, religion or wealth.  Our society begins to disintegrate into factions, and we descend into pride, hatred and warfare.  This in turn results in adversity that humbles us, and the cycle begins again.  The Book of Mormon poses the question: how can human beings break this cycle?  How can we both prosper and remain committed to principles of humility and righteousness?

(Of course, LDS scripture insists that breaking the cycle is possible!  Book of Mormon peoples established two centuries of perfect peace and unity after the coming of Christ.  In the Book of Moses, the city of Enoch ascended to Heaven after establishing Zion -- a society based on perfect unity and compassion.)

My first question for Romney related to a specific case of the pride-humility cycle: "How do you think you would deal with the temptations of presidential power?"

This specific question is explored in the Book of Mormon in the Book of Mosiah, in the stories of the second Mosiah, a wise and righteous king who abdicated the throne in order to give his people a republic, and in the story of Noah, a wicked king who abused his power to personal advantage, and brought down his entire society as a result.

My second question for Romney was also drawn from the Book of Mosiah: "As president, how would you apply the principles of the sermon of King Benjamin?" I woke up from my dream sitting next to Governor Romney, flipping through my Book of Mormon to Mosiah chapter 4, to the section of King Benjamin's sermon where he discusses our treatment of the poorest among us -- the "beggars" (and where King Benjamin insists that we are all, in fact, "beggars" in relation to God, and that we therefore are particularly culpable if we withhold our substance from those who are less fortunate than ourselves).

(In my dream, my edition of the Book of Mormon was gorgeously illuminated, with key texts written in calligraphy, and with illustrations in the margins around the text!)


Unfortunately, I woke up before the Romney in my dream could answer my questions...

Dreams, Death and Transformation

A friend of mine recently recommended I read James Hillman's The Dream and the Underworld (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).  Hillman, who passed away just before Halloween of last year, was a Jungian psychologist best known for his work on dreams.  I came to this delightful little book expecting a theory of dream interpretation, and what I got instead was an anti-interpretation theory.

Hillman makes a convincing case that the function of dreams can best be understood through mythologies of the Underworld.  Hillman begins with a careful analysis of Greco-Roman underworld mythologies, showing how precisely they reflect the human experience of dreaming, even hinting that underworld/afterlife mythologies are the product of dreaming.  Hillman then goes on to argue that if you want to understand how to approach dreams, you have to understand and accept the rules and etiquette of Hades.

One of the most obvious underworld/afterlife-like features of dreams is the fact that we can and frequently do meet and interact with the deceased in our dreams.  I've had a number of dreams in which I've interacted with my grandfather -- who passed away long before I was even born!  In another underworldly dream, I encountered a friend who has been dead many years, who invited me and Göran into his home and offered us a meal of pizza topped with caviar.  Göran was afraid to eat food with the dead, and so declined.  I was not afraid to join my deceased friend in a meal, but unfortunately, as is quite often the case with food offered in the house of the dead, it wasn't the tastiest.

Initially, I found Hillman's book a tad frustrating.  I kept wanting him to finish critiquing Freudian and Jungian dream analysis methods, and start telling me how he thinks we should analyze.  He never does.  At the very end of the book, he does have a chapter entitled "Praxis," in which he discusses possible meanings of very common dream tropes and images.  Though he prefaces this chapter essentially by saying: Well, I'm putting this chapter in here because I have to.  Because you'll get mad at me if I don't, and because I can't resist the urge to critique some more.  But please ignore everything I'm about to tell you, because it may or may not be useful in working with your own dreams!

What I did find both fascinating and helpful was his insistence that most dream analysis is an exercise of the ego.  We tend to impose our "dayworld" preoccupations and interests on our dreams, and this, he suggests, is a violence.  Dreams are not symbolic recapitulations of what goes on in our waking life.  They are underworldly (from the viewpoint of death/the dead) commentaries on or critiques of our waking life.  The question is not, "How can understanding my dreams help me to achieve my goals?" so much as, "What does my dream-self think of my goals?"

I was particularly intrigued by Hillman's discussion of the impact of what he calls "Christianism" on dream work.  Bottom line: it's bad.  Hillman sees Christian doctrine undermining a healthy valuation of "the Underworld," of the "psyche" and the subconscious.    Christianity substituted pneuma (spirit) for the old pagan psyche (soul), an impoverishment in Hillman's opinion.  In the Christian worldview, the Underworld is transformed into Hell, and Hades into the Devil -- a very unhealthy development in his opinion.  "Christianism" as he describes it sees "death" and "Hell" as bad things that are vanquished or banished by Christ.  He discusses, at length, the psychological significance of the biblical doctrine of Christ's descent into Hell, and his resurrection from the dead.  Christ, he says, went into hell so that we would not have to.  He vanquished death.  And what this means, in psychological terms, is that "Christianism" provides no healthy context for wrestling with our demons.  (The old Greek word daimones had a more morally neutral connotation -- not evil minions of the Devil, but powerful sacred beings.)  Hillman argues that modern psychology is finally setting right what a couple of millennia of "Christianism" set wrong, by recovering a classical understanding of the subconscious/Underworld.

That critique was interesting to me because Mormon doctrine and belief, I think, rescued and rehabilitated the Underworld from what Hillman describes as "Christianism" long before modern psychology.  First of all, Mormons believe in a literal Spirit World which, for all intents and purposes, functions in many ways like the classical Underworld.  The Mormon Spirit World, in addition to being coterminous with the literal, physical "dayworld" (much as Hillman describes the classical Underworld being), is a world with which Mormons communicate through visions, partings of "the veil," and -- significantly! -- through dreams.  For Mormons, Christ's descent into Hell was not a vanquishing of or annihilation of Hell, but simply an opening up of missionary work.  Thus, Mormons have a concept of being "saviors in Mount Zion," which boils down to the notion that not only did Christ descend into Hell, but so can we, for the sake of carrying on the missionary work he initiated -- an activity that our salvation is considered to depend on.  Many Mormons imagine that the most valiant of our dead family members are already doing that work "on the other side of the veil."  And we participate in that work on "this side of the veil" through genealogy and vicarious ordinance work, among other things.  From Hillman's point of view, surely Mormonism at the very least should be acknowledged to have opened up a psychological space within which dream work and work with the subconscious is both possible and meaningful.

One of the insights I particularly appreciated from Hillman's book had to do with the function of death, disease, chaos and degeneracy in dreams.  Nightmarish dream images usually point us toward the transformation that death promises.  I guess how we feel about this depends a lot on how we view death.  Hillman argues that one reason dream work is important is because it allows us to integrate death into a healthier understanding of the meaning of life.  This is why it is important to let death, in essence, speak to us, speak to and critique our dayworld life.

*****

This insight helped me understand a particularly puzzling or troubling dream I had this past weekend.  In the dream, I was at some kind of high school prom.  It was the kind of social event that I dreaded when I was in high school.  I was not one of the "popular" kids in high school.  (I guess most of us weren't.)  I guess I was what you would call socially awkward, so these kinds of events often left me feeling isolated or lonely.  The prom in my dream was no exception.

At a key moment in the dream, the Prom King and Queen arrived.  They were a male-female couple, but there were a number of things about them in the dream that were very bizarre.  First of all, they arrived dressed totally in winter clothes -- scarves, overcoats, gloves, hats, etc.  Second, they looked kind of alien.  They had long limbs and tiny bodies, and their skin was whitish and rubbery, and crinkled like the skin of a reptile or an amphibian.  Actually, up close their flesh looked like it was flaking and diseased, about to be sloughed off, so it might even have been leprous.  Also odd: even though I knew them to be male and female, they looked totally androgynous.  The only way I could tell which was the guy and which was the girl was the eyes.  Something about the (big, googly, amphibian) eyes gave away that they were masculine or feminine, but that was it.

Everybody was ooh-ing and ah-ing over them.  They became the immediate center of attention.  People hung on their every word, and everyone was gathered around them in a big circle.  In my dream, I had other duties I needed to attend to...  Specifically, I had a student who was taking an exam, and I needed to proctor the exam.  So instead of getting caught up in the buzz around the Prom King and Queen, I attended to my duty of taking care of my student.

I woke up with a sense of: "Yes, don't get caught up in worrying about status or popularity, focus on your duty."  That was my "dayworld" sense of the dream's significance.  But the bizarreness of certain aspects of the dream bothered me.  Hillman said death images point to transformation.  And the diseased, "leprous" appearance of the Prom King and Queen (as well as their winter clothing) suggested there was something "special" about this heterosexual pair, that they were undergoing some sort of "transformative" process.  Was this communication from the Underworld/Other World telling me that heterosexuality is indeed special?  That only heterosexuals get to experience the kind of "transformation" that Mormons imagine in terms of apotheosis?

Of course the hitch in the imagery of my dream was that the transformation experienced by the Prom King and Queen seemed to be erasing or dissolving sexual difference.  The "male-female" couple in my dream were being rendered androgynous by their transformation.  It was only the eyes (the perspective, the way of viewing the world?) that seemed to remain gendered in any way.

Hillman stressed that dream messages frequently are ambiguous.  They are both/and.  Simultaneously black and white.  So this dream was, perhaps, reaffirming my sense that I need to learn to live and work without envy; while also pointing me toward a sense of marriage as sacred, as transforming.  And on the question of whether transformative marriage is gender exclusive in a way that would invalidate my relationship with my husband, the dream seemed ambiguous.

*****

A dream I had earlier this week, after the Prom dream seemed like a sequel, at least in relation to this question.  In this dream I was engaged in genealogical research with my family.  We were in a big genealogical library.  Some of us were doing research, while others of us were tending children.  The kids were being occupied through arts and crafts projects.

Later, Göran and I went to a big conference.  The conference was in a Heavenly Convention Center.  It was literally high up in the sky.  There was sort of an infinitely tall highway we drove up to get there.  And I expected it to be crowded, but it was not.  Somehow, Göran and I ended up approaching the center from a direction different from everyone else.  So I couldn't get immediate access to the parking across the street.  I had to push our vehicle -- a faded red (pink?) convertible across the highway meridian by hand, and then pick the car up and place it in its parking space.  Apparently the car was super light, or I had super strength, because picking it up and putting it down in the right space was easy for me.  Then I rejoined Göran at the front entrance, where we could enter the Heavenly Convention Center.

This dream began with an activity (genealogical work) Mormons see as central to the plan of salvation, that has to do with our relationship to the dead, and that situated me in both an immediate and extended family.  The presence of the kids, and adults who were tending the kids, seemed to say to me that in achieving the tasks necessary for exaltation, some of us might be delegated different roles.  Some of us might be having kids -- tending to the future of the family.  Others of us might be doing genealogy -- tending to the family's past, and to its larger relationships.  But we were all part of the same team.

The end of the dream had me and Göran entering together into what was, essentially, a symbol of Heaven, of the Divine Presence.  The pink convertible was, like the Leprous Prom Couple, also a symbol of transformation from the mortal to the heavenly, a convertible, of course, being a car that changes from one form to another, and the faded red/pink color of the car being an obvious symbol of the flesh, of embodied existence.  The final step in Göran's and my journey involved getting out of the car, and literally putting it away for a time.  The fact that we were arriving by an unconventional route, from a direction different from most others seemed to speak to the fact that even when we don't fit the typical mold, there was a way for us.  There was plenty of space there for us.

Again, there is ambiguity in the dream symbolism.  The "putting away" of the car could symbolize a desexualization of our relationship, necessary to enter into Heaven.  Yet, we had arrived at Heaven together, partners traveling as "one flesh" (in one shared automobile).  If putting away the car symbolized putting off the flesh, it could have been a putting off the flesh only in the conventional sense of death as the threshold we need to cross at the end of this existence.  In that sense, the "transformation" Göran and I went through in this dream was not fundamentally different from the transformation of the Prom King and Queen that seemed to efface their sexuality too.

*****

The gift of Hillman's book was to help me be more OK with the ambiguity of these dream symbols, to let me be more OK with just puzzling over them, letting the dream images puzzle me, challenge me, and perhaps speak to me at some more subconscious level.  It was partly because of Hillman's discussion of dream work that I let my mind explore more fully the imagery of the Leprous Prom Couple which had initially troubled me, and disinclined me to much want to think about this dream at all.  So thank you, Dr. Hillman, for your words literally from beyond the grave.  It has renewed my hunger for the next installment, my next meal with the dead.

A Post-Technology World

In the dream I had last night, the world had changed. There was no more Internet, no phone systems. Long distance travel was very limited. Automobile and air flight existed, but was extremely rare. Local transportation was all by foot, bicycle or handcart. In order to preserve social cohesion, society had been completely reorganized around hierarchical, person-to-person networks, which made word-of-mouth communication more effective. There were local team leaders, who communicated with group leaders, and so on, up a chain of communication to some level of national and world leadership. We were all waiting for word to move to Zion.

Göran and I had slowly been traveling westward. We were in some western town in some place like Colorado. We had made our way there by foot travel, over a fairly long period of time. I was a trusted government official. People looked to me to help keep them informed about what was happening outside of the local community and region. There was a woman we knew there from our days singing in the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir.

There was general anxiety about the fact that we no longer had the conveniences that modern technology had once provided. We were all living in a society on the edge, so efficient use of resources and a high level of social cohesion and coordination were absolutely necessary in order to maintain order, and ensure everybody's survival. Life felt precarious. But in a sense, it also felt good and right. People loved each other. They treasured family and relationships, and took care of each other. Since all of our communication was person-to-person and face-to-face, our relationships with each other were more real, more true and substantive.

Göran and I were permitted to make a trip to Finland. We actually brought a delegation with us that included friends and family members from Göran's side of the family in Memphis. We went to eastern Finland, where we were going to stay with my cousin Kalevi and his wife Anja. Most people in that part of Finland had never seen or encountered people of African descent, so my arrival with Göran and members of his family aroused considerable excitement and curiosity. Members of Göran's family were regally dressed, and made quite an impression. Kalevi and Anja seemed a bit nervous – uncomfortable even – but they were still hospitable.

Kalevi and Anja had once had a small dog – a dachshund. But for some reason, they had been unable to care for it, and had given it to some neighbors who lived across the street. The dachshund had had a litter, and so the neighbors had another little dachshund like it. As we arrived at Kalevi and Anja's house, I saw the dogs standing on the pitched roof of the neighbor's house across the street. The dogs were brown, but tinged with a kind of turquoise or aquamarine color – I had never seen dogs like that before. They started barking excitedly when they saw us. I could tell that the dog that had once belonged to Kalevi and Anja missed them. The neighbors came out of their front door to greet us, and the little dogs, in the meantime, had run from the roof into a gabled window, down some stairs inside the house and then out the front door. From there, they ran excitedly toward us, barking as they ran. When Kalevi saw the dogs, he seemed to panic. He quickly ran into the house and closed the door behind him. Anja had a wistful look on her face.

I realized that Kalevi really missed his dog, and it was too emotional for him to have to deal with it, and that is why he had run inside, before it could get close enough to greet him.

*****

This was one of those dreams that felt revelatory to me. At first, as I was still waking up, it felt prophetic to me. I wondered if it was possible that we soon could -- in my lifetime -- live in a world without things like the Internet, telephones, or various forms of high-speed travel. It's imaginable... Just imagine a post-petroleum-based economy, and it doesn't seem completely beyond the realm of possibility.

What was fascinating to me, though, was that my dream version of such a world wasn't a dystopia, it wasn't a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There was anxiety, there was a sense of the precariousness of life, but in many ways it was a richer, fuller, more satisfying, more human world, in which human needs were met and human problems solved through face-to-face, personal relationships. We had figured out how to feed people, how to clothe and shelter and care for everybody, how to maintain social cohesion and government, basically using stone age technology!

As idyllic as the literal possibility of a world without the Internet sounds, as I shook the previous night's sleep out of my head, I thought more about the really preposterous dream elements, such me being a trusted government official in Colorado, leading a Memphis delegation to North Karelia with my husband, and my Finnish cousin's inability to deal with his emotions about the bluish-green dachshund he'd given away to his neighbor. And it dawned on me that maybe I ought to look at the dream a bit more metaphorically.

This dream I realized was about communication and human relationships. Living in a world with no Internet, no telephones, no cars and no planes, in dream language, I realized, is about a major breakdown in communication. Communication was a theme in my Spaceship Humanity dream, too. Though in that case, I felt it was about a specific communication challenge for me and, more broadly, for gay Mormons. In this dream, the breakdown in communication is global in scope. It's about a general inability on the part of human beings in general to communicate with each other in a truly satisfying way.

And in this dream, I see myself and my husband Göran playing a role in bringing people together. In the past when I've dreamed about traveling out West, it has had to do with making a deeper connection with my faith. So it seems likely to me that our traveling on foot to Colorado might have to do with me building bridges within the Church. Of course, in my dreams, Memphis symbolizes Göran's "home country," and North Karelia (Finland) symbolizes my "motherland." So it was clear to me that this dream was also about Göran and I playing a bridge-building role within our families.

The dream was also about successfully navigating the emotional complexities involved in bridge-building. Without getting too Freudian about the potential significance in my dream of a male family member showing anxiety in the presence of a blue "wiener dog," I think the dogs represented most broadly the power of emotions. Their blue-green color could symbolize spirituality and vitality. The fact that they had been banished to a neighboring house, only to loyally return, and the emotional conflicts created by their return, is suggestive of the challenge of mastering and integrating one's emotions.

My cousin's discomfort with his emotions made it difficult for him to receive our "delegation." His inability to extend hospitality had to do with fears and anxieties that were very much his own, that originated from within himself. It had nothing to do with his guests (though, in my dream, cultural difference was a factor in their reception). A successful bridge-builder will recognize this and take it into account in his or her interactions with others.

*****

My dream reflected a role that Göran and I have played in reality on significant occaions in our families. When there are breakdowns in communication, when family members don't want to talk to each other, we have often been the only ones that everyone talks to; we've been the go-betweens.

I do think there is something to be said for the notion that gay and lesbian folks are "natural" bridge-builders. Like many social "outsiders," by virtue of the fact that there's no unambiguous place for us in the public culture, we are forced to live in two worlds. We are forced to be "bilingual," because the native tongue of the love and affection that comes naturally to us isn't permitted or isn't understood by the majority. We have to speak, instead, the language of the dominant culture. We learn to speak that language in ways that are polyvalent, that are susceptible to multiple meanings and interpretations. We had to do this to survive.

This is, I think, why gay folks gravitate toward callings and professions that benefit from this kind of psychic multilingualism: the arts, language and linguistics, teaching, social service, diplomacy, politics, religion... Our gifts come in most useful when there is a collapse of social cohesion and order, or when there are breakdowns in communication.

When we are healthy, grounded, and strong, we contribute indispensable gifts to our communities and our families. It's hard for us to do this effectively when we are suicidally depressed or socially isolated. So homophobia deprives our communities and families of much needed social resources. On the other hand, when we are allowed to care for each other and love and nurture each other in loving relationships, we can play important roles in solving the problems that the whole human race has faced in crises past, and that it will face in crises future...

Spaceship Humanity

Monday night I had a dream that the human race was living on an alien planet. It was sort of like Mars – the land was orange, the sky was orange, and it was very arid. We were building a giant spaceship to return home to earth.

The spaceship was enormous. It was so big, it was impossible to actually see the entire ship from the planet's surface, where we were working on it. We were assigned to work on the spaceship by family teams. Göran and I were part of my father's team.

Göran and I were at the site – the portion of the spaceship – that our team was assigned to. I saw signs of sabotage. Somebody had poured some greenish black, sticky, oil-like substance into some of the machinery of the spaceship. It looked like it was acidic, like it was eating up and destroying the machinery, and like it would stick to and burn anybody who tried to touch it, so I avoided touching it. I tried pointing out the sabotage to some of my other co-workers. Some laughed it off, and thought it was nothing, but some were concerned, and thought we should bring it to the attention of our supervisor.

We were living in apartments – everyone had temporary worker housing. I wanted to talk to my dad, so I went to my parents' apartment. My sister was there living with them. It was the middle of the night. I entered the front door, and their security system started to beep. I needed to punch in a code, or else the security system would alert the police. I knew the code – Dad had given it to me. But it was dark in his apartment, and I was having trouble entering it because I couldn't see the keypad. I tried entering the code a few times, but the system kept beeping. I hadn't wanted to turn on the light because I hadn't wanted to wake up the whole family, but finally realized I had too, or everyone would be disturbed when the security alarm started sounding. I turned on the light, and saw that the keypad had somehow gotten unplugged from the system, and that's why my efforts to enter the code hadn't been received into the system. I plugged it in, and reentered the code.

*****

I've been thinking the last few days about the meaning of life. Last night, while I was doing a bit of Internet browsing, I came across a debate between Marvin Olasky and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens laid out his case fairly eloquently. It was, in a word, that if God exists, he is the worst totalitarian despot that could possibly exist -- watching our every move and our every thought, and punishing us for the least nonconformity. Every atrocity in human history can be blamed on God's self-appointed messengers, who claim to speak for God in order to aggrandize themselves. But the good news, says Hitchens, is that the messengers are liars, because if they were telling the truth, that God actually does exist, there would no possibility, no hope of true human freedom or happiness -- only abject slavery for all eternity. (Hitchens' image of God bears such a striking resemblance to the kind of God that, in the Mormon reckoning, Satan would have been, had he gotten his way in the Council of Heaven!) Hitchens didn't bother me, but it did get me thinking about how we find meaning in life. Why is it that some of us find such tremendous comfort in the notion of God, and others seem revolted by it?

I've also been running into lots of, for lack of a better term, anti-gay stuff spouted by religious folks. I know I'm kind of a sucker for reading it. Part of me thinks, "OK, I need to know what these folks are saying, so I can respond to it intelligently." Especially, since I'm ear-deep in the anti-amendment campaign. But this stuff wears me down. It all boils down to the reasons why these folks think I'm broken or my family doesn't deserve recognition. So part of me realizes, maybe, to be healthy, I need to not read that stuff. I already know all this stuff. No need to be reminded. At least I've confirmed that, no, they don't really have anything new or insightful to say.

And then, I was sort of fishing around on this site, about the documentary Kendall Wilcox is putting together on gay Mormons. There's a lot of really great, incredible stuff on there. Very uplifting and encouraging and hopeful stuff.

I had a moment, though, of some old junk coming up when I listened to the interview with Ty and Danielle Mansfield. What I realized is that in my early 20s (back in the early 80s), I was seriously wounded by the messages I got about how the only appropriate path for me was marriage to a woman. By my junior year, I was suffocating... It was factor in the spiral of depression that almost led me to commit suicide in the summer of 1986. This was also why, after I resigned from the Church, I actually considered the possibility of a life of celibacy as a kind of liberation! In the LDS Church, that certainly wasn't considered an option back then. That culture of pressure to marry was just really, really painful for me as I came to terms with my gayness.

I understand what kind of path Ty is on. He hasn't been reckless in this. He's been open and honest and transparent. I don't think -- at least I've never heard him say or even imply -- that anybody else ought to follow the particular path he's chosen. I have tremendous respect for the way he's working out his salvation, and I'm genuinely happy for him having found a truly wonderful, blessed marriage.

Still, there are voices in my head that say things like: "See, he can do it? What's wrong with you?" And that brings me back to a kind of despair that's always threatened to derail me. This is my shit, not Ty's shit, and I own it. The only reason I mention it on my blog is because I think this is something that a lot of other gay folks in and out of the Church struggle with, and it has resulted in a fair amount of on-line venom directed at Ty and Danielle, when they deserve, instead, our love and support.

*****

My dream -- about getting off an arid, alien planet -- I think, was the Spirit's answer to all these questions, fermenting in my brain.

Realization number 1. We're all in the same boat. And there's no hope of any kind of individual salvation that involves leaving others behind. There are no individual ships, no luxury cruisers for the privileged. In my dream, if you want to go home, you contribute to bringing everybody home.

Realization number 2. I'm expected to contribute. I have a role to play in that salvation, which is really about establishing the rule of love, the "higher law" of the gospel. I have a role to play that requires me to stop feeling sorry for myself -- "Oh, woe is me! Why is life so unfair?" Learning real love, real patience, and real humility is not easy. It requires the death of the ego. It requires us to listen and be silent. To concentrate. It's a message God's been transmitting to us for millennia, and we for the most part still just haven't gotten it. And this life is my chance -- wherever I stand in life -- to work at it, to try to get it.

In my dream, the spaceship we were building to bring humanity home was huge... It was so large it stretched off far beyond the horizon. All I could see of it was my small corner, the part of it I was supposed to be working on. That didn't mean I could afford not to do my part on it.

Realization number 3. There is opposition. There are opponents, there are saboteurs. The true saboteurs are not necessarily those who disagree with me about certain issues. They are, rather, those who are so trapped in ego that they can't see any way to deal with the world except through contention and a supremacy game. There are lots of folks on both sides of any "issue" who fall into that category. At one time or another, most of us have fallen into this category. In my dream, this kind of contention was represented by the sticky, acidic poison saboteurs had poured into the machinery of our spaceship. I knew that I could not even touch the stuff, without it sticking to me and burning me, so I left it alone, and decided to let our "supervisor" deal with it.

I imagine that the "supervisor" in question in my dream was the Lord. That's who I report this stuff to, any way. I give it to the Lord and let him take care of it.

Realization number 4. In my work of salvation, I am part of a "team." My team is my family. It includes Göran. Göran and I, as a team, are part of a larger team that includes my extended family, and that was represented in my dream by my parents.

God does not require any of us to do this work alone.

Realization number 5. Because there is opposition, because there are saboteurs, there is security, there are safeguards. This was represented in my dream by the security system in my father's house, that was designed to alert the police and alert my family of dangerous intruders. Since I was not an intruder, I had been given a code that would allow me to pass through the security system and enter my father's house. However, like any humanly administered security system, it is possible for there to be false alarms. In my dream, I had a rightful place in my father's house, but I wasn't able to enter my code because the keypad had been accidentally disconnected. By turning on the light, I was able to see what the problem was, reconnect the keypad, and then enter the code and have it received.

In my dream, I had worried about turning the lights on, because I didn't want to disturb my sleeping family. Isn't that often how it is in the Church? Aren't we often afraid to "shed new light" on a problem, because we're afraid that to do so will be perceived as disruptive? Don't we often just continue to fumble about in the dark, rather than to "make a fuss"?

But then I realized, it would be far more disruptive to let a false alarm be sounded. So I turned on the light, and sure enough, in the light I was able to perceive the true source of the problem -- not that I didn't have a valid code, not that I didn't belong in my father's house -- but a connection problem. In other words, a communication problem. The security system was simply not receiving my data. Isn't that in fact the primary problem that gay and lesbian folks in the Church have had? We've been transmitting data, we've been trying to tell our stories to Church members and leaders, but the data just hasn't been received yet. We need to stop fumbling about in the dark, turn on the lights and find some way to make that connection. I think, maybe, that connection is starting to be made.

835 Dreams

This morning, I recorded my 835th dream in my dream journal. It actually appears in the journal as Dream #815, but there are exactly 20 other dreams that escaped my numbering system, either because I jotted them down in the dark and promptly lost or forgot about them, only to find them later, or because I wrote them down before the days when I actually started numbering my dreams in a journal. Some day, probably in the next year or two, I will record my one thousandth dream. And then I think I will throw a party. I'll invite anybody who ever made an appearance in one of my recorded dreams. I doubt George W. Bush or his dad will come to the party, nor Barack Obama, nor Thomas S. Monson, nor J.K. Rowling, nor that actor who played the Scarecrow in the new Batman movies. But if even half the people I know in real life who've made an appearance in one of my dreams show up, that will be quite the rockin' party!

Oddly, I have yet to have an actual dream about practicing yoga. That is really strange, because since mid-July, I've become something of a yoga addict. There's only been one week (the week of Thanksgiving) when I didn't make it to yoga class six times in seven days. (I typically go every day except Sunday.) I've recorded 68 dreams since I started practicing yoga, and in those dreams I've dreamed about work and home and teaching and church, bathing, eating, going to the bathroom, sleeping, sex. I've even dreamed about dreaming! I've dreamed about just about every activity and experience that plays an important role in my life, except yoga. Weird, huh? I'll let you know if I have a dream about yoga, but so far none.

I have a working theory about why that is. I think it's because yoga actually brings me into a state of consciousness that is similar to dreaming. (I said that I've dreamt about dreaming, so I guess that wouldn't rule out dreaming about yoga. More on that in a second, but...) In my experience, through the breathing and the physical postures of yoga, I actually do begin abandon the conscious mind and move into a more subconscious state of awareness. That's actually what they tell you you're supposed to do in yoga. My teachers encourage me to empty my mind and to focus. Actually, if you're doing yoga right, you eventually can't help it. The breathing and the postures are designed to stress your body and mind in ways that force you to empty your conscious mind and focus, if you are going to be able to continue. The achievement of that relaxed state of focus is the whole goal of yoga.

Often when I achieve that, I experience moments of pure ecstasy and inspiration, and it's not uncommon for me to re-experience dreams. Dreams that I have forgotten or partially forgotten sometimes come back to me with vividness and clarity during savasana, the resting posture we always take at the end of a yoga class. After I had experienced this a few times, I wondered if perhaps the state of consciousness achieved through yoga was not similar to or connected to the state of consciousness I experience when I'm dreaming.

My dreams about dreaming are actually exceedingly rare: I've recorded maybe 2 or 3 of them out of 835. And even these weren't technically dreams about dreaming, they were more what I would calls "dreams within dreams": dreams where you "wake up" from a dream, only to find you are still dreaming. So if my yoga practice brings me into a similar type of consciousness, that might explain why I haven't dreamt about it yet.

I recently read through all my dreams, from beginning to end. I've actually created an index of my dreams. When I have a dream, I record the date of the dream, I assign it a number, and I give it a title that is descriptive of the main character, activity, or theme of the dream. For instance, the dream I recorded this morning I titled "Universalism Debate," because the portion of the dream that had the deepest emotional resonance for me involved me trying to explain to people why I was not a Universalist. (I know, I am utterly bizarre.)

I also assign the dream a category or type. The dream type is determined by two factors: where the dream took place, and what type of role was played by the central character in the dream. (Usually I am the central character in my dreams; often it is someone else.) So, for instance, if I have a dream that takes place in Utah, and my father is the central character in the dream, I would assign that dream the "12D" type. (12 = dreams that take place "Out West," D = dreams involving a father/father figure. If I were the central character in the dream, but the dream focused on my role as a father or father figure in Utah, that would also be a 12D dream.)

All of this dream data goes into a spreadsheet I've been keeping. The spreadsheet let's me sort the dreams alphabetically or by date or by category. The main reason I reviewed all my dreams recently was to make sure I was happy with how I had categorized them. (Categorizing is a very subjective process, especially since some dreams have multiple locations and multiple important characters, and it can be difficult to figure out which are most important in the dream.) Once I had completed this review and updated my spreadsheet (with 800+ dreams, it took a couple of weeks), I generated some reports. I was curious if a statistical analysis of my recorded dream life would give me any insight. It did actually give me some helpful perspective about what kind of person I am.

One nice thing about having all my dreams recorded in electronic format is that it makes it much easier to do studies of dream symbolism. For instance, the other night I had a very striking dream (#812, "Queen of the Underworld"), which took place on a train that was speeding through the English countryside. If I wanted to research the meaning of the symbolism of being on a train, I could just do a word search on "train" or "railroad," and easily find every dream I've ever had involving a train.

So far, I've sorted my 835 dreams into roughly 250+ categories. Many of these dreams are unique -- the only type of dream of a particular category. For instance, my "Queen of the Underworld" dream is the only "15Q" dream I've ever had -- a dream that takes place in "the old world," and in which the central character (the "Queen of the Underworld") plays the role of "herald."

The most common dream category I've identified is the "3B" category: dreams whose setting is my immediate home or neighborhood, in which the central role is what I call a "communications specialist" role. I have a lot (a LOT) of dreams that involve me being a scribe/writer/communicator. I guess anybody who knows me well won't be surprised by that. Almost one in five (well, 17.49%, actually) of my dreams has this as the most important role/activity. And a little over one in five (21.44%) takes place in my home or immediate neighborhood. In roughly 3% of my dreams, these two dream elements intersect.

The more common dream settings and characters tell me about my "default" mode in life. These are the dreams I tend to find least interesting, because they are so common. But they are important, because they tell me most about who I am and what my concerns are in day-to-day life. The top four dream settings for me are: first, my immediate home/neighborhood (21%), second, downtown/work (15%), third, "out west" (California and the Intermountain West -- yep, I clock a lot of dream time in Utah) (9%), and fourth, a university/college or other institution of higher learning (8%). The top four main roles/main characters in my dreams are: first, communications specialist (17%), second, father/father figure (9%), third, researcher (9%) and fourth, fool/child (8%). (I spend a fair number of dreams being lost, confused, or desperately trying to find something!)

The more rare/exotic settings and characters are the most entertaining, partly because they are so unusual. They are the dreams that grab my attention, that I find "cool" and that I'm more likely to talk about with friends or family, or spend more time puzzling over and analyzing. The four rarest settings in my dreams are: first, the "Far East"/Pacific rim (0.8%), second, Heaven/a Heaven-like place (1.2%), third, outer space (1.3%), and fourth, Canada/"the Northwoods" (1.6%). (Yes, in my dreams I go to Canada slightly more frequently than I go to outer space.) The four most unusual main characters/roles in my dreams are: first, Jesus Christ/a Christ figure (0.4%), second, a "herald" (0.7%), third, someone in distress (0.8%) and fourth, God (0.8%).

In the past week I have intuited my angelic name while looking into the eyes of a long lost friend, used my power of flight to go in search of missing brothers in L.A., celebrated Seder with Jewish neighbors, witnessed the coming of the end of the world, exposed a polygamist plot being hatched by a corrupt Mormon mission president, hunted vampires in Eastern Europe with Göran by my side, and served as a military chaplain in Iraq, all from the comfort of my bed.

I guess when I do the math, it's slightly shocking how much time I spend recording and analyzing dreams. It's not just that it's good therapy, though often it is that, I guess (and a lot cheaper). I frequently have the experience of waking from a dream that on the surface I found rather alarming, only to puzzle over it for a while and, after taking a deeper look at its symbolism, being comforted or pleasantly surprised by the insight it offered into a difficult situation or question in my life. No matter how disturbing a dream may be to me, I've learned to get over it, and just write it all out, in all its gory detail. Sometimes it's the really weird, embarrassing stuff that holds just the key we need to understand something profound.

The day after Thanksgiving I had a dream in which I had decided that the disconnect between being gay and the world I lived in was too great, so I set off in search of a place on earth where being gay was normal. I decided to start looking in China (#801, "In Search of Gay America (in China)"). It was a sprawling dream that involved the heartbreak of leaving friends and family, getting lost in Shanghai (which, in my subconscious mind's feeble attempt at humor, had a quarter known as "Americatown"), struggling to get by in a place where no one spoke my language, but also occasionally being helped by angels in disguise (like a tall lesbian waitress dressed in white). The dream ended without me having found my destination, standing in a vast atrium in a glass building, near a fountain where the sun was shining down. A gay waiter (dressed in white like the lesbian) had led me there, and told me this was the place, but I still couldn't see it: just endless corridors heading off in different directions, and throngs of people coming and going. Maybe that was my subconscious mind's way of telling me that whatever we consider Utopia is not a place that we find ready-made for us, but a place we create through our choices.

That dream is a good symbol, though, of why I'm obsessed and fascinated by my dreams. It's about that life-long search to try to find myself in the place that's just right.