Final Retreat: Dream

Two things have become themes on my retreat this summer: rain and nightmares about my peaceful retreat space being violated. My last nightmare was much worse--last time it was rapists and murderers breaking into my retreat cabin. This time the intruders knocked and were---Evangelicals! So, I'll back up. I'm on retreat. I'm upstairs (trying to have sex with a really hot woman who then turns into my husband and then my brother--but that's probably way too much info about the inner-workings of my funky psyche...so, we'll revise that...) I'm upstairs, umm..."sleeping" peacefully and suddenly I look out the huge windows and see lots of people wandering around. I think, "that's odd. No one's supposed to be up here except me. Why are there other people on the retreat grounds?" And then I hear voices. I go downstairs and there are all sorts of people milling around, eating, hanging out, in my solitary retreat space. I ask them to leave. They dilly-dally. I start screaming. I yell that I'll call the caretaker who will kick them out if they don't go. And then the doorbell rings. I go to the door and recognize several people from my dad's church: three moms and a little boy (who in real life turned out to be gay, very much to his parent's consternation--they kicked him out I think). I hope they don't recognize me. I don't open the door. Through the screen they tell me that they reserved the house for a group retreat. I tell them I have it for another day. They go away but then come back with the caretaker. She tells me she's not sure what happens but she wonders if...I interrupt her and say, "You want me to share the house with them, don't you?" She nods her head. "No, absolutely not. They're nice people. I know them from the church I grew up in. But I am here for a solitary retreat and I just can't do it with them in the house. I'll leave if I have to." The dream gets fuzzy from there. I know went out walking on the grounds, feeling vaguely guilty for not sharing. And I know I didn't share the space. I don't know if I got the house back or not.

So the meaning of the dream seems obvious to me. The house had become for me a symbol of God's love for me--real love, lavish love...not love purchased by another divine being dying a terrible death and going to hell and paying my "debt" to make me acceptable, but real love. The sort of love that says and believes, "You are worthwhile. You are precious. You delight me. I truly want to be with you, just as you are. You delight me just as you are, even if you are not perfect. I may be better than you, holier, more loving, more perfect and mature, but all of those things make me long for you more, and all of those things mean that my presence (not some act of belief on your part) will make you more and more of those things. Come be with me!"...the kind of love--that utterly besotted, delighted love I feel for my daughter, but even greater and more prefect. And that house was being invaded--by people who represent the sort of faith I grew up with, the God I grew up with who doesn't really know how to love or to be present, who's even worse at it than I--an imperfect human--am! And I needed to kick them out. I need that house. I need to live in the love of God. I need to live in the presence of God. I need to live in that space that will make me more and more of who I am meant to be. And I think God wants for me to live in that house. I think God has been for years loving me out of the faith that re-traumatized me, that told me that God couldn't really love me, the me who found Evangelicalism full of contradictions and pain and weird illogical attempts to resolve all of those contradictions, but the me who, nonetheless loved God, longed for God, sought for God with everything. But that one fault, that one flaw, that inability to make myself believe--well, that was enough to kick me right out of the lavish "unconditional" love of God. I could have killed someone. I could have raped someone. I could have tortured someone. I could have done all of those things and God still could have loved me, could have wanted to spend all eternity with me, could have forgiven me anything just as long as I could believe what I was supposed to and pray that sinner's prayer and beg forgiveness. But this one thing God could not forgive--my inability to accept a particular faith system. And I' pretty sure that God has been slowly revealing Her kind, gentle, loving face, revealing His faithful, joyful, delighting love and slowly wooing me right out of the faith that once told me it owned God.