As I pulled into our driveway, I noticed a strange circular mark on the sidewalk in front of our home.
What’s that mark on the sidewalk? I said to my wife. She replied, I have no idea.
We carefully examined the circle, noticing that it had what looks like an arrow pointing to our front door.
We stood for a moment on the sidewalk, contemplating what the mark could be.
Hell if I know, I said to Polly, and nodding her head she said, Yep.
During the wee hours of the morning, I abruptly woke, said something to Polly — neither of us knows what — and ran from the bedroom, only to return moments later. Come morning, Polly remembered nothing from the night before, but I remember exactly what happened during my frightful dream.
Polly took a vacation day, so we decided to drive to Findlay and eat dinner at Texas Roadhouse. We had planned to attend the Cincinnati Reds vs. Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, but nonstop rain and cold temperatures forced us to change our plans.
During dinner I asked Polly, Do you remember me running from the room last night? She replies, Nope.
I had a bad dream — a dream I have had on and off for years. According to my dream, there is a secret group of people living in Florida who are out to make life miserable for me, threatening to expose to the world the “real” Bruce Gerencser. In some versions of this dream, this secretive group opts to kill me, causing my head to explode. Last night, they caused my head to explode, and this is why I bolted from the bedroom.
We talked about dreams in general for a few minutes, and then it was time to pay our bill and return home to the teeming metropolis of Ney. An hour or so later, as we pulled into our flooded driveway, I noticed that the torrential downpour had washed away from the sidewalk the circle with an arrow that pointed to the front door.
Polly, I think I have figured out what the circle was all about! Not stopping to hear her response, I said, the circle was put there by an advance party of aliens so the mother ship would know where to stop last night. My nightmare was the result of aliens probing my mind!!
Polly laughed, as did I.
Hey, I am serious!
In a Trumpian world of alternative facts where lies are truth and facts are opinions, who’s to say that my story is not true?
I have recurring dreams, too. I don’t know him many times I have dream of that I was leading music at church, in nothing but underwear, or absolutely naked.
Even now, years away from being in church, I still deam this. It is usually when I am very tired or mentally drained.
I’ve been an atheist for quite a while but one thing bothers me, it is that religious songs keep coming up from my memory. I attended,with my large family, the apostolic christian church and they thought they were the only ones going to heaven. One part of this church was sunday night singing. On Sunday you could spend nine hours in church, sunday school and preaching (in several languages, Serbian, English, German, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak) in the morning,, preaching in the afternoon, and singing at night. I found that singing is a physical exercise and when you exercise with a group of people, you become closer to them. Well hours of singing every sunday night did not leave me when I becane an atheist, so these songs keep popping into my mind from time to time. One day i saw a notice that a church nearby was going to have a songfest on a sunday night, so i planned to attend and did attend. it was a church which had beliefs far from my old church. The church was quite full for this event and they had a nice free meal afterward. I really enjoyed the songs being sung and several of them, I knew from my life as a believer. I really enjoyed singing and the whole evening although i didn’t believe the words being sung.
milan illich
Greetings milan illich, It is about the feelings, don’t you think? I still break into hymn music out on the rough old hills of B.C. where I live on farmland. I call it the indwelling and it is a good time indeed. Picture me tooling up with Billy Graham’s old money-maker alt(e)r call at the closing of his crusade preachings: Just As I Am. Now, I have to admit that I am liberal with the lyrics and try to instill in them a more appropriate message for my today:
Just as I scam
Among the trees
And coyotes eyes
They stare at me
And sure they want
My blood for free
Oh beast of Bone
I come, I come…
It can go on like this for several extended rounds, each verse less intelligible than the last!
I think that the feelings we experienced in belting out feelings, what you call exercise, stays with it us forever. The exact thing happens to me with some only popular music of my youth, especially Motown, Diana Ross, and much old folk stuff too.
Like you, I just love all this stuff. Do you ever listen to American South gospel choirs? Holy smoke, holy smoke, can they make me whoop it up. It is a good thing I live on some acreage because I would scare my city neighbors to death I am sure…
Mike,
I still enjoy religious music from time to time. I have some Vineyard and Hillsong on my iPhone, iPad and Shuffle. I use that music as a way to relax.
I don’t agree with the words, but that music was a big part of my life for so long. Think of the reverse situation- how many Christians enjoy secular music, even though the lyrics go against what is taught in the Bible? I love music and it was a way for me to escape, as a child, even though it was religious. As a young adult, I branched out into the praise and worship music and found I really liked it. So it is no surprise that I still enjoy it.
I’m sure there are deconverted people who would disagree with me and avoid all religious music. That’s fine, too. I’ve had Christian people get offended that I listen to religious music. That gave me a laugh.
If I remember correctly, even Bruce Almighty has some Southern Gospel playimg once in a while.
I still enjoy religious music from time to time too. When I’d first deconverted the lyrics really used to bother me, and sometimes they still do a little, yet I like listening to the music and can get a little nostalgic over them. I feel the same about some pop songs from my teens and I sort of take the same attitude to it: every once in a while I like listening to it.
The few times a year when I visit church with family I still enjoying singing too. It is and always has been the best part of church for me.
In a way, it is more freeing now. Some songs have a pretty toxic message, that I used to believe, now I can just enjoy the music and roll my eyes at some of the lyrics.
There was a song that we used to sing in Sunday School called “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam” but I thought it said Zombie. So I used to always sing it “Jesus wants me for a zombie” until one day I asked my mom “Why would Jesus want us to be zombies?”….she had to set me straight, lol.