It has been a little more than a week since I marked another birthday. This year it was a quite one, a small contrast to last year's Number 52. The Birthday, once it was My Day, an occasion for special request cake and unwrapping gifts in front of neighborhood and school chums; now, more of a time to score another notch on the mortal coil and look over the shoulder and a time to consider what is ahead. Perhaps I am now half-done with my allotted years, or it could all end tomorrow. Or, could we be living in "The Last Days"?
I like to believe that Time has imparted a modicum of perspective to me in the last several decades, but maybe not. As for The Last Days scenario: in any eschatological referendum, put me down as a skeptic that we are in "End Times". But then again I've had a year to think about it and maybe I am really not so sure after all.
The Book of Joel -
In the last days God says I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophecy.
Your young men will see visions,
Your old men will dream dreams...
Last year's birthday was a celebration of good friends, good food paired with good wine, all under my category of good times. I invited a small crowd of friends over on a Sunday (scheduling the party 1 day ahead of Monday's real birthday date) and served them a shrimp boil dinner, grilled sweet Italian sausage, homemade bread, and since it was a celebration, nobody was stingy with bringing along a bottle of fine wine. A late November afternoon of cooking, hosting friends, telling jokes and stories and sharing a toast or two should have made for a sound slumber and a pleasant launch for my 52nd year.
Unexpectedly, my post-party sleep was disturbed early Monday by an edgy dream of rough men breaking into my recently rented Sunstone Exploration office space. The dream awakening me sufficiently to note and remembered the dream experience - somewhat unusual in itself. I returned to sleep, only to continue with visions of my office being ransacked. I awoke again and was perhaps more alarmed by stolen sleep in those small, dark hours than of any import to the dream itself. The dream came back to me yet another time before the day began.
With Grant stirring upstairs and getting dressed for school and the Sun about to rise on My Day, I rolled out of bed and stepped into a hot shower. My wife gathered her robe and left the bedroom for the kitchen to make breakfast, there I joined her and told her of my disturbing 3-episode continuing dream and the sharp feelings still left by this dream sequence. The memory was unusually raw, leaving me feeling angry and violated - on my birthday. Whereas most of my dreams are forgotten before I get out of bed and if they linger, they evaporate along with the hot shower steam and are gone by the time I select the day's clean underwear. But this dream lingered. My wife hums the happy birthday tune into my ear and I finish pouring out the OJ into my favorite mug. We both finish the morning routine, a quick read of the newspaper, she finishes dressing while I brush my teeth. We are about to part our separate ways for the work-a-day world, when she lays out a couple of wrapped gifts on the table for the evening family party and then wishes me a happy birthday again and voices a hope that my dream has no basis in reality.
As I open my office door on this Monday morning, I immediately see that my desk drawers are left half-open and then notice that the ceiling tiles have been punched out at the far end of the office. Somebody entered the empty office next door, scaled the wall and moved out the ceiling tiles and jumped into my space. They searched my office, took nothing and then scaled the wall at the other end of my office and scavenged the business next door as well. I called the police to file a report. I did not tell the officer that I saw this happening from my darkened bedroom 3 miles away and through closed eyes. I like to avoid complications when dealing with the police. Since I could report nothing stolen, they just filed an incident report but would not make any kind of investigation.
Like I said, it has now been over a year and no further acute dreams or visions have occurred. But of course many question have occurred to me. The one driving question is: On my 52nd birthday, did I have a vision or a dream? Referencing the Prophet Joel, if it was a vision that implies that I am a "young man", but if I dreamed a dream, then I am classified as an old man.
Vision or Dream? Young Man or Old Man?
End Times or Bedtime?
Good Night and Sweet Visions to all my contemporaries.
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