I’m writing this in the wee hours of the morning. I was awakened by a simple decline in the need to sleep. During that period of time when my conscious awareness was slowly returning to a waking state, I crossed a boundary area where a dream was waiting for me. It was a significant dream, a message from God. It carried that signature of significance, demanding that I pay attention to what transpired.
Telling you the dream wouldn’t mean anything to you. It was one of those symbolic vignettes that evoked some of my waking awareness of the world, but with a jarring disconnect from what I knew to be real. That disconnection was the revelation. In ways impossible to explain, my awareness that this couldn’t actually happen in real life triggered a recognition of what could and should happen. It signaled to something lying dormant inside of me, waiting for this moment of half-waking awareness to open up the message the Lord left for me. The dream pushed me into a place where I could get a line of sight that showed me a piece of the puzzle previously missing.
This much of the dream would be meaningful to you: It was about a man and his ambitions. What I saw him doing, his interaction with me, and the things I saw were distinctly not characteristic of this man. Rather, the image of this man characterized what he appears to be doing in terms of my own existence. His identity won’t help you understand; the dream was not about the man, but my impression of him. The Lord was using him as an avatar for something about me, something that He has been trying to separate from my sense of calling and mission. That it became a separate person in my dream indicates how far I have come from the days when that was me.
The reason for all of this struggle, and how long it took me to get here, is that my mission and calling is wholly unprecedented in my own awareness. All of my education and training have pointed to a certain kind of mixed career that, while it was the closest approximation I was going to find in this world, was certainly not the calling itself. What the world gave me was represented by the avatar in my dream. It was the identity, the territory through which I had to pass in order to move in the right direction on a very long journey.
By the way, my obsession with cycling in particular, and fitness in general, is connected with my premonition that I will live a lot longer yet. I need to keep this fleshly body in the best shape possible so that it will serve as a good tool, not as a burden to be dragged around behind me. Cycling is the primary avenue left after all the things I’ve lost along the way. Also, cycling serves as the single best way of keeping my communion with Creation alive. Cycling gets me out away from the interference of human noise so that I can hear the voice of Creation calling. It’s another kind of fitness. I would have kept cycling if all I could get were battered used Walmart bikes, but this fancy one I have now vastly improves my ability to get out and stay fit both ways. It calls to me and evokes my desire to ride.
At any rate, the dream has prompted me to review some things I’ve covered in the past. I’m convinced the Lord wants me to talk about those things. I may never really understand how I gained the attention of so many fine children of God, but while I have that attention, I need to make sure it gets used for a divine purpose.
