My Friends, and The Ocean

 I dreamed I was in a familiar house, a mix of several houses I have shared with close friends and family. I hadn’t lived there in a while, but I felt a sense of investment in the house and the community, and I had lingering sense of responsibility for the house, and for its occupants. 

The house was situated by the ocean, but everyone who lived in the house were convinced that the ocean wasn’t a “real” ocean, they said that it was just a complicated illusion, a glitchy computer generation. They cautioned that only people who had trained for years would be allowed to go out into the ocean, because only with the proper training could people be trusted not to get lost and caught up in the ocean. A young couple who I know well and trust deeply were in the process of being trained to be sent out into the ocean, but it was strictly forbidden for anyone else to go anywhere near it. 

The people in the house were very preoccupied with sending out this couple, and with talking about, and cautioning about the ocean, but I knew that a special friend of mine was coming to the house, and I wanted very badly to get their attention. I wanted them to help me welcome my friend, who I knew had been out ministering for a long time. I wanted to provide a place for her to rest, and to be served, and I felt it was really important not to ask her to serve us. 

I met her outside of the house, and as I walked her into the house, she pulled on an ugly, chopped up, short, dark colored wig, and she tucked all of her own beautiful gold and silver hair up underneath the wig, out of sight. I didn’t understand why she wanted to be covered up like that, but she assured me that it was better she wear the disguise, and I helped her tuck the last piece of her own hair in up behind her ear. 

When we got inside, nobody would help me to find a place for my friend to even sit down, let alone eat or rest. And nobody would help me carry her luggage. Finally, while we waited in the entry hallway of the house, the people who lived in the house noticed that I had brought in a guest, and they began arguing about “what to do with” my friend. 

I realized that discussion was gonna take a while, and a really needed to use the bathroom, so I left my friend graciously standing there in the hallway, holding her equipment. When I got into the bathroom, I realized that the only available toilet was a children’s toilet that stood only inches off of the ground, and that the stall doors were higher than the toilet was. There was no privacy, and I was angry because that problem had existed long previously, before I’d left, but nobody had fixed it. I was equally annoyed with myself that I hadn’t checked to see if the problem had been fixed, and fixed it myself before my friend had arrived. 

As I was in the bathroom, I could hear the muffled sounds of the people who lived in the house still arguing rudely, right in front of my friend, about what to “do with her,” and before I could intervene, my friend walked past the squabblers, into the inner room, and began to minister on the piano. I was both disappointed that she felt she had to intervene, and also expectant about the effect that her ministry would have on my friends. 

When my friends didn’t even seem to hear or to notice the music, I was so upset and disappointed that I just left the building. I walked out the door, and then just kept walking, down to the beach, and then right out into the water. 

It wasn’t fake. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Soft pinks and celadon and lilac, dropping off into the deep like upside down outer space. As I walked down the slope of the shore, and began submerging myself, it didn’t seem unnatural that I didn’t have to hold my breath. There were underwater tide pools, filled with mysterious creatures that inclined toward me, and rejoiced in my presence. This ocean didn’t *need* me, but impossibly, I realized that I actually brought joy and life wherever I engaged with my surroundings. I was made to be there, and the ocean was waiting for me.