kimurho

In my dream this morning I was a young woman in a high end shopping outlet late in the evening - more Harrods of London than American shopping mall, I think. I was in a fairly deserted section of the store, alone except for a young man about my age, when the store loudspeakers announced a lock-down due to a terrorist threat to the store. The young man and I joined forces to hide. The assumption in the dream was that the terrorist was Muslim.

We were near the toilets, heading for a semi-enclosed area with mannequins when the door to the men's loo opened and a young man with a swarthy complexion exited. I feel somewhat ashamed to report that my dreaming self put him in a turban like a Sikh because he was Muslim. While we were all three staring at one another in shock, the door to the lady's loo opened and a young woman walked out. She was wearing a beautiful silk outfit, silver embroidered design on a silver-grey background - a long loose tunic over trousers with a headscarf that surrounded her face.

Before we had the opportunity to process this, we heard someone coming and NONE of us had any trust in the authorities searching the premises - we expected them to shoot whatever moves and sort it out later - so the man grabbed my hand and pulled ... hurried toward the door to the area we were going - he had keys and let us in, locking the door behind us.

There was a period before the guard arrived when we could talk and we all questioned one another, talking about the terrorist attacks. The young Muslim couple were not the terrorists, but they defended their goals, pointing to the misery, poverty, starvation, disease and death of their homelands. I argued back that violence is not the answer; that it the personal responsibility of every person no matter what religion they profess to become a force for change and good in the world.

WE have a duty to the Almighty - by whatever name we use in worship - to leave the world a better place than how we found it.

The woman asked me what I was - what my religion was and how I worship. I replied

I am a Theist {I believe in the Almighty}. I follow the teachings of the Christ and I worship everyday with my words, with my deeds, with my thoughts, with my dreams, with my hopes and with my desires. I walk with the sure knowledge that God is present in all things and all peoples, at all times and in all places.

It might seem like I remember that remarkably - even suspiciously - precisely, but what struck me at the moment of waking was how close what my dream-self said was to an old Gaelic prayer, Carmina Gadelica #8 ...

O God,
In my deeds,
In my words,
In my wishes,
In my reason,
In the fulfillment of my desires;

In my sleep,
In my dream,
In my respose,
In my thoughts,
In my heart and soul always.

In the dream, the guard came and unlocked the door. He poked around a bit while we pretended to be mannequins on display, then left. The young man let me and the Muslim couple out of the store after the guard moved on by a side exit and I was checking to see that they would be able to get to safety when I woke up.