A bit of a mash-up this Sunday. My brother turned me on to what looks like a large conservative Mennonite church (quality of singing, head-covering, if not no matter), singing Down in the River, so there’s a link. And I dreamed I went to church. As Cohen might say, at last the spirit is taking up some of the heavy work.
Last night I dreamed about my father. He is dead now but still comes to visit. He was taking me along with him to a church in which he was to preach. While we like the word minister better than preacher, it was clear in this instance that it was preaching that he was going to be doing. I thought it might have to do with the music video that I saw the other conservative church swaying and marching to the hymn Down in the River, but thinking harder on the image, it reminded me of the church in La Crete Alberta (photo on the right) in the Peace River District. It was becoming more liberal allowing tv and roads and education, comfortable seats, in a nice big church where I attended a Sunday morning service when I was researching Tourette’s syndrome for my still unfinished Involuntary Tongue ms.
The physical location was not so important, but inside it seemed the church kept getting bigger and I kept moving forward in other words; dad went up to sit where a preacher sits in a church, is it a dais? I was on my own and I was trying to lie down or to have my feet up because my because my feet hurt as they do. The service just went on and on and more people kept coming there was the inevitable kids story, a youth worship band, with a message from the youth preacher, but everyone stayed in church rather than going to Sunday school. Then there were the announcements and then there was the introductory preacher, and by the time it was my father‘s turn to preach an hour and a half had passed. I had been moving through the church a few benches at a time, but forwards, until I was in the back most choir pew. Dad looked miserable for having to speak even for 20 minutes after people had been been sitting for an hour and a half. I woke up when he got up to speak, terrified his mouth would go dry.