I think I've mentioned to my friends a few times before that I tend to have some very dark dreams. Now, these aren't nightmares or other truly frightful things, but I seem to have a lot of bizarre and unfunny things running through my head at night, when I can remember them by the morning.
When I say bizarre, I'm not referring to some type of colorful acid-trip. This isn't happening in a teletubby-filled land with multicolored trees and rainbows and the like. While we both stared at some artwork hanging in my church gallery, an older Catholic priest acquaintance of mine told me that his dreams were like that art - happy technicolor. (My baby boomer readers might think of something like the Beatles' Yellow Submarine album cover.)
Unlike my friend, my dreams seem to be more like the feeling (if not the picture) you get when you see a Dali painting. Perhaps that's why I'm so drawn to his art. Perhaps in actual experience they're something like being in the midst of a Samuel Beckett play.
The other night's dream could easily fall into that category, I think. Except it was a bit more disturbing to me in the moment than many of the others, especially in an abiding sort of way.
Here it is . . .
In some way or another, I had found myself in Florida. I'm not sure why I was in Florida in this dream. Perhaps because my mother used to live there? Or because it's full of frightening alligators everywhere or a miserably hot & humid climate with no interesting topography? I'm not sure. That's enough to disturb anybody.
At any rate, I was there to watch a football game. Yes, friends! A football game. (For those who don't know me as well, keep in mind that I've never been to a football game, other than for marching band, in my whole life. I don't really like the sport, although I did used to watch it on television. So, I was in Florida, in a huge stadium, ready to watch a football game.
Suddenly, off to the left of the stadium there was a bright glowing light - like an explosion - and everyone in the stadium started to clap - like at a symphony concert. They were not at all rowdy or rambunctious about it. Over the rim of the stadium appeared the space shuttle, just having launched from Cape Canaveral.
(My mother used to live just a stone's throw away from there, in a neighborhood full of NASA employees. I hope this isn't supposed to tell me something Oedipal about my psyche. That'd be creepy.)
So, the Space Shuttle came up and over us at about a 45 degree angle past the rim of the stadium, and rose slightly higher and began turning in a corkscrew direction, when the right rocket booster naturally flew off but then began zooming straight down towards us.
As I watched it, I remember a fleeting feeling of resigned panic as I realized that this is how it was written in God's plan that I would die - as the missle flew off the spaceship and exploded into the midst of the crowd, killing everyone painlessly and instantly in a burst of bright, clear light.
After the flash, I suddenly found myself in a plain grey room - something like a doctor's waiting room. It had a feeling of uncomfortable meaninglessness to it. But I was not alone. There were others there with me, who seemed to be also stuck in this very grey place. It was unpleasant, but not horrifying.
I thought to myself, perhaps this is what Hell is. My life is ended and I have arrived at my designated place.
As I began to unpack this idea, I remember at some point that there was a long line of people - men and women - who I remember as being dressed in middle-class business-casual attire who were walking in a moderately moving line through the room on the opposite side of where I was sitting. (We were sitting in chairs along one of the wide walls of a rectangular room.) These bored-looking people were basically walking from one door on one end to the other, and I had the impression that they were perhaps en route to be processed in some type of arraignment situation. For all I knew, they could have been plucked straight from the line of any grocery store, only without carrying anything to buy.
After much waiting and watching this happen, I think I must have asked one of the people beside me about this place. The lady who was sitting beside me was kind of a glasses-wearing, mousey, friendly, and studious librarian type with shoulder-length brown hair and a medium build. She must've been sitting there for a long time, because she told me, with an air of resignation, something that came across to me like, "Oh, of course you know, this is Purgatory."
It's worth mentioning here that I wonder a lot about what we will actually experience after we depart from this Earthly life. Nobody really knows, of course, what that will actually be like. A lot of me tends to think that on some level we need to be punished for some of the sins we've committed in a way that cleanses us from them, before we can enter into the presence of God. For those who are relentless self-critics, like myself, this may be our coping mechanism that allows us to not judge ourselves so harshly, knowing that in some twisted way that we'll be okay because God will punish us in the end. Perhaps, as an Orthodox priest first told me, Hell is what happens while we encounter such pure holiness that is God. I'm not sure. Either way, I think this detail of the dream was a reasonable approximation of what my current expectations are about what my immediate afterlife will be like.
At some point after hearing this woman fill me in on what was going on, I walked over to a closed door on the left side of the room - the one that I remember people may have been either walking into or out of. I opened it to see what was inside.
Immediately after opening it, I felt a very harsh and evil presence before me. The doorway was filled with a swirling mass of very dark and thick smoke, almost like something you could grab with your hand, like sand. It may have also felt hot with an inner sense of deep pain and anguish. This was certainly the doorway to Hell, and I remember reaching just my hand inside it to feel what it was. I needed to experience it on some level - perhaps to not be as afraid of it.
I remember when I woke up, I felt very surprised to actually be back to my real life. My calm and detached reaction was, "Oh, I guess I did not die yet."
Over the past year, I've read some of the stories collected by near-death researchers. What may be surprising for some is that not all people have these beautiful visions of heaven you hear about in the media. Quite a few certainly do have experiences that are either unpleasant or truly terrifying and hell-like.
But what comes of this in the lives of the people who see them is something different altogether. Surprisingly, some who have had the grandest visions of heaven then find their lives changed dramatically for the worse after having had this experience. Others who go through some type of hell-like experience have found it to be one of the most healing things they could ever imagine encountering.
While there is a lot of me that is very frightened of death and of the eternal consequences facing me, just as they will face everybody, I feel like I'm starting to deal with the picture of God I developed as a child. This was an idea of a very angry, judgmental, and probably capricious deity who will crush us and torture us with pain for every willful sin we have committed - every act of disobedience. Then, in an act of transactional mercy for all the good we've done in this life, this God then banishes us into a state of ultimate and deep nothingness as our final destiny.
When I think about it in this way, I have to take this picture of God seriously, since the vestiges of this vision of God are present in me even now, deeply corkscrewed as they became into the sponge of my grey matter. At the same time, my reason and my more recent Christian formation know that this picture is not true.
Yet, on some level, I know I must fight against these types of distorted and disturbed visions by facing them head-on and taking them seriously. I can do that for myself by asking questions: How is God's mercy and love revealed or hidden through this picture of an angry God and a torturing hell? How is redemption brought about by this type of God and the way this God acts? Does this God remind me of Jesus? Does this God remind me of other visions of God as they are found in the Hebrew scriptures? These questions aren't so much to challenge this idea of God, but to really ask how this vision of God is one that is right and correct. How healing comes through a deep experience of pain or meaninglessness, without the meaninglessness going away.
When I talk to some of my close friends who are strict rationalist agnostics or atheists, they challenge me with some scientific facts about these near-death experiences people write about and how they've been duplicated in lab settings, complete with having visions of divine or traditionally figures, meeting deceased relatives, encountering visions of light or experiencing tunnels, etc.
The question from my skeptical mind follows: what if our ideas about God are really based on these types of tales that many generations have heard from those who were somewhere on the borderline of death. The dying brain releases these chemicals to deal with its demise, and we begin to have some type of very vivid dream - a dream that is the culmination of all of our experiences and efforts and expectations of what we think we will find when we arrive at this final moment. Then, before we vanish into nonexistence, our last vision in our dying head is the one we have built upon and created throughout our whole lives.
May this be the scientific explanation for "heaven" - just as we have had other scientific explanations for other phenomena we had formerly thought as miraculous or holy? What if we were to go with this as true? Would our faith survive as we embraced these types of ideas? Can we find meaning even if heaven itself is completely explained as a scientific and rational phenomenon? Will there be healing in this as finally the great arguments of the atheists and agnostics can finally come together with those who believe?
I recently told a colleague of mine that yes, I wanted to be cremated, but that I firmly believe in the Resurrection of the Body. (Surprised by this, she said, "Oh, so you'll come back as a dust devil!) At times, my belief in God and the teachings of the Church as I have come to receive them is sometimes an angst-filled struggle to want to believe in these things, telling them to myself over and over again to somehow convince myself.
Yet, there is something compelling about the message of Jesus Christ that I simply cannot let go of - or that will not let go of me.
Whatever it is that is so compelling and overwhelming - this is what is ultimately deeply moving in my life and what draws me closer to what I label as "God". It is what makes me say, even after long days of working in the church and dealing with politics, arguments, and mini-crises, that I am, in the overall scheme of things, furthering God's Realm.
I'm unconvinced that my giving into this pulling forward will lead to any type of eternal reward - or even guarantee an after-death pleasantness or tolerability. I'm also not sure that any decision I make will lead me into "Heaven".
What I do know is that something that is truly compelling cannot be ultimately resisted. It is something much stronger than anything within me, and I cannot resist.
But, as one friend reminds me, "Why would you want to?" The question is moot - I wouldn't even if I could.
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