Two years ago we stayed in New Haven for our daughter's graduation from Yale. She booked us an Airbnb at a small farm. Outside the window were fields with the first of the season's crops and a view of the sky. Oh and a pair of donkeys. It sounded like a new twist on breakfast music.
Later in the week John was making noise in his sleep, and I reached my hand over to calm him. Which it did. In the morning he relayed the dream he was having which involved trying to speak back to the donkeys. He was braying.
On the way to school I mentioned it to the twins.
"Dad was praying in his sleep?"
"Not praying. Braying."
Recently I was enmeshed in a complicated dream in which I could not run very fast, or think quickly. Forces were striving against me in my effort to protect children. I wasn't clear whose they were, but it seemed imperative to save them. Plus I was running out of time.
I woke up abruptly, exhausted from the chase, yet relieved that it was over.
I looked around in the darkness. My mind worked. My limbs behaved. The delayed reactions and sluggishness of the night fell away, and I felt free. The danger was an illusion.
There is a woman in town who passed away this spring. Her body had long ago stopped cooperating, as did her ability to express herself. I wonder what it is like for her now, as she wakes up to a world in which her spirit can act in concert with her desires, and the husband she has not hugged in many years reaches out to her.
This life will seem like a drowsy existence indeed when our eyes are finally privy to eternal life. There will be no need to run in a desperate attempt to outsmart the clock, but maybe we will haste for better reasons.
