Warning: If you have no sense of humor or don’t get sarcasm, you’ll be safer and happier reading this in the presence of others. I tend to range from painfully intense to comedic and today I awoke in comedic form. So, here we go.

Last night, I was obsessing about and reviewing and reviewing the NEXT blog post, which is painfully intense. I decided to take a break before final posting and update another website while I watched a documentary on the 1960s. Even though it was saving (or saying it was saving), I did not preview periodically but waited until I had done quite a bit. Then preview kept saying, “Yikes: We hit a snag. Try again or contact customer support.” Then, I decided I would just hit publish because if I lost all of these updates, I would just die or at a minimum have a major cow.

God laughed and said, “No you won’t. You certainly won’t die over something so trivial and remember, you’re practicing patience and not having a cow over something you can’t control any way. It’s either saved or it’s not.” I decided that on this particular occasion, God was right. So, I chilled out and called customer support (chat was not available due to the time of the hour). The person who answered admitted he was not long out of training and since he also had a wacky sense of humor, I continued to relax as we tried to reset without actually resetting. The site I was updating continued to say “Publishing. This may take a few minutes.” It had already been over an hour. It was five in the morning. So I just left it running and went to bed. When I awoke, it was still doing the same thing. I decided to go ahead and share this dream I had with you before checking to see if ANY updates have actually been published before I forget this dream.

Okay. I had a dream last night about Melania. Wait, hear me out. She and I and a few other people are going on this international trip. We’re in a huge airport/convention center that has been in my dreams before but in which I have never been. We’re hours early for the flight and we’ve gone to some hotel suite, apartment-like place that appears to be connected to or in the convention center. Melania and I are laughing it up like old buds and somehow we’re related. In-laws or something, I don’t know. There’s another person there laughing it up also. I’ve concluded this connects to watching the documentary which included college student protests combined with thinking about new friends from my recent return to graduate school. The third person was a composite.

Next scene. We’re walking through one of the rooms and a friend of mine from California is sitting at the dresser mirror. Melania and I walk by and wave and she nods back as if we had just walked through a few minutes ago. In reality, I haven’t seen this friend in years and even though she is what many of us here in the United States would call “hot,” she’s physically quite different from Melania. She also probably is quite different politically and/or religiously from Melania. Even in the dream, I’m trying to put this relationship together, but who knows. They could be friends in real life.

Next scene. I’m walking on an Ivy-covered college campus. Ivy, like England like ivy-covered, with a huge lush quad. This place also has been in my dreams before even though it doesn’t look real-life familiar. I comfortably walk around for a bit and then the scene switches again and I’m back in the hotel suite/apartment. You may not know me well enough to understand what I see next, so I’ll skip that. Discussion for another day. Then, I’m asking the other folks in the room about getting something to eat before our flight. Melania says she just got back from eating but she and I keep chatting with the college student friend while I get dressed. My plan is to get dressed for this long flight before getting something to eat. In my mind, this means really comfortable jeans or loose pants and a sweatshirt. Melania however is thinking linen sheath. I like that too so I say what the heck and put one on. She helps me get my clothes adjusted. I know this part comes from thinking about a choir stole that I was wearing on Sunday with no velcro. I kept feeling like it was all out of whack and it probably was as my clothing tends to be a bit askew even with velcro and even on a good day.

Next scene. I am dressed and I am walking next door to just say hello and go back to the suite. Work with me. When I exit the suite, I am exiting a house and walk to the house next door. Melania and a couple of other people in the house are waving. It’s raining lightly so I put up my the hood on my red jacket. The red jacket I simply connect to rolling out the trash in a light mist last night. Then I go in the house next door. Inside, there’s a huge family getting ready for dinner and I feel as if I’m in another friend’s house, who is a former neighbor and often has informal gatherings with friends, visiting family, etc. Even though she has become very suburban and in many ways cosmopolitan, she grew up in a rural Southern community as did her spouse. These gatherings thus have yielded some hilarious stories, partly due to this mixture of a diverse group of guests.

Remember, I was only dropping by to say hello. Instead, I end up joining them for dinner. We form a big circle and pray and then sit down for dinner in places throughout the house. Next thing I know, I have been for there for hours having a good time and remember I have a plane to catch. A short time of panic as I think I’ve left my phone back in the hotel suite/apartment and no one could contact me if it was time to board. Then I go in a bedroom and see my phone and start packing up. Why am I packing up if I just stopped by. I don’t know but I am. No one has texted or called me so I relax. And, no I did not know what time the plane was to depart. I just didn’t. I get back to the hotel suite/apartment and we all go to get in the boarding line. There’s more to this dream but it is not relevant to the next post. At least, I don’t think it is at the moment and I am determined to publish that post TODAY!  Plus, if you know me, Pastor La Ronda stories often have no ending. This is because, thankfully, I’m still alive and this is my life and the stories continue.

If you’ve made it this far in the post, you may want to ask me, “Should I be on medication?” Yes, I am on medication and you should be too. As one of my military/lawyer friends always says, “Better living through chemistry.” Chemistry and spirituality actually go together quite nicely. We start to get a better sense of when the Great Spirit is speaking to us and when we’re just speaking to ourselves or some combination thereof. Most of this dream was the Great Spirit. This was God reminding me of the overwhelming need to stay joyful, how I’ve found that joy in so many different communities, and of the need to take time to join in helping others to be whole and to be joyful as well. This is God telling me to review the next post one more time, removing any snippy divisive and bitter comments. Those comments are not from God, but from me, a human being like any other with on-going healing to do.

Amani,

La Ronda