Honest Trailers Version of Palm Sunday

We join the dream in progress...

The time and place is the ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem.  The tone is a cross between *Jesus Christ, Superstar* and *Honest Trailers*.  A narrator's voice says, "Now, if Jesus knew that Caesar wanted to kill him when he entered Jerusalem, if he'd bumped into Caesar, He would have AVERTED his face.

Jesus, walking through the city gates.  

Various townsfolk milling around.

Caesar, wearing red and white, with a few centurions, walking the other way.

Narrator:  "Jesus, AVERT!  Jesus  AVERT!"

Jesus obviously jumps, angles off and hunches over to His right, abruptly brings His left hand up to cover His face.  Caesar and centurions walk right by him, oblivious.  

Narrator (continuing):  "And the people when they saw Him would not have shouted out His name, because that would have brought Caesar.  

Various People of Jerusalem:  "Hey!  It's JESUS!"  "Hosanna JESUS" (Looking back over their shoulders at a retreating Caesar and Centurions, who continue to walk out the gates of Jerusalem as if nothing's wrong.)  Jesus gives them a 'shut up' look and makes little shooshing motions with His hands.  "JESUS!" (Still no reaction from the Romans.  They continue in the manner of middle-school students trying to get a rise out of a substitute teacher.)  "JESUS! JESUS! JESUS!"   Nothing.

Scene break.  Caesar and Jesus are no longer in the dream.   A social hall or a long, wide stone street.  People of Jerusalem have gathered along ether side of the passage.   Slowly, the people coalesce into two large circles, side by side.  Focus on a forty-something woman in grey Bible-garb.  "Oh Lord, we give thanks that You are here, and we joyfully accept Your story, embracing your pedigree, your plan, your vision--everything!-- in it."  As she has been speaking, her circle has grown tighter and more distinct.  

Pan to the other circle.  Someone says, "Oh Lord, we are glad You are here, and we like You a lot, but we're still debating all the other stuff.  I mean, over all, Your message is great and all, but... well... some of the details just don't add up."  A woman, whose strips of Bible-garb clothing have not been put on as well as a lot of the other folks', moves from the first circle to the second.

First woman (kind of irritated):  "Hey.  You were in our circle."

Second woman (flustered, looks down):  "I, um, I changed my mind." 

... and then the dream moved on to an SCA-style gathering....

Prophetic Angel-Serpent Dream

I've been hitting the gym less, and my shoulder feels better.  I should go running on the eliptical soon.

I dreamed I was in a high school or college play.  It was a mash-up of Jesus Christ, Superstar" and "Godspell," I think.  I was playing a prophet, and typically, It was opening night and I was having difficulty recalling my lines.  (That I'm a prophet who's forgotten his lines strikes me as signifiant and funny in waking life.)  

I was wandering around back stage, which seemed to be a bunch of tunnels made out of parachutes. When I asked a woman if I could take a look at her script.  At this point I realized that my part had been cut, and that someone else had been given my part's song-and-dance number.  

There's a bit of break and the next thing I remember, I was on the stage.  This was a giant, twisty thing of concrete; in waking life I'm reminded of the "dinosaur bones" in Avery Park in Corvallis, only these were three stories high, and more like columns of frozen water.   They had been made by Winged Serpents -- which may have been fallen angels at one point -- and the Serpents had twisted around and around the concrete columns so that their scales were embossed in the sides of ridges that were wide enough for two or so people to be able to spiral up to the column's top.

I was in some sort of New Testiment Temptation of Christ... only I think the Archangle Micheal was speaking to me (or Christ...) and saying how the trails of his brothers (the Serpent-cast trail) were there.  The Serpents had turned to Angels in mid-squeeze, and when their Serpent bodies had fallen away, only the scaely impressions and their smaller Angel bodies were left behind.

Various cast members were using chalk to color in some of the scales into mosiacs, and chalking in things like nativity scenes along the inside of the trail.  

In waking life, I'm reminded of various dreams I had a few years ago which are part of a dream-knot, but in this dream no deities were hot, shirtless studs and there was no kissing.

Dream: Why Am I Dreaming About Jesus?

I've been thinking about various dreams I've had over the years that have an divine erotic gay male theme to them, and to that end, I managed to dig up this old dream from 2000.  I've included it here with the tag dream-knot for personal research reasons.  Segment Three of the following had stayed with me (for reasons that will become obvious), and those readers whose sensibilities are offended by a non-traditional Jesus may wish to skip this post.

May 20, 2000

OK.  I guess I shouldn't drink margaritas (it was only one, I swear) then think about religion and queer spirituality before going to bed.  Oh, and No, I haven't been reading C.S. Lewis in quite some time.

I'm also not clear on the segments' order.  I saved the weirdest for last (which may offend some religious sensibilities, so consider yourself Warned).

Segment One

We had arrived at a fancy restaurant, in a litter [editor--or palanquin or sedan chair] for four to the buffet table.  I am not sure how the litter was carried there.  We were all dressed up, I was in some kind of black tuxedo.  One of the women in our party was trying on the cheesy gold paint and glitter crown I have, but she had it on backwards and Marg P and I were trying to convince her to switch it (although it kind of worked the way she had it on).  Our litter for four sort of took up the entire isle it was in, and so we had to fold it up out of the way and just walk to the dinner salad.  I think Arcosanti somehow worked its way into this. . .

Segment Two

I was walking down Ridgewood hill from my parents' house to the bus stop to take to school.  Someone was helping me carry a large spot-welded log down the hill.  It was really huge.  Unknown to us, we were also carrying a bear in the log, which had somehow snuck in while we were halfway down the hill.  I think it was a polar bear.  When we were three quarters of the way down, I realized there was no way it (the log) was going to fit on the bus.  There was a discussion of how we could take the log apart and then re-spot weld it together when we got to school.

Segment Three

It was a warm day, and I was at the beach.  I was walking through the surf.  I think I had sandals on so I didn't have to worry too much about rocks or glass or jellyfish.  I looked up at the dunes and there was a figure in white walking towards me.

"Oh man," I thought to myself.  "This is going to be like one of those cheesy 'Footprints in the Sand' posters, isn't it."  The sun was behind me, so the dunes were very bright.  The figure on top was lit up very well and His clothes were whiter than the sand dunes He walked upon. 

I guess there was channel I stepped into because He disappeared behind the dune's crest, but eventually I came up out of the water and we met.

He was wearing a white turtleneck and white slacks and had a dark, suntanned complexion.  He had a very short, masculine beard - almost like He hadn't shaved in three days.  Wordlessly he showed me His right and then His left hand so I could see the stigmata.  I thought to myself, "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet still believe."  I felt a little like doubting St. Thomas.  He lifted up his shirt so I could see the spear wound over his hirsute and tanned abdomen.  With a bit of a shock, I realized Jesus was a stud.  [Editor-I suppose the closest parallel I can come up with is suddenly discovering that one's friend's parent is Super Hot which is A) Unexpected, B) Exciting, and C) Awkward.]  (I don’t know why Jesus would appear to me like He had just finished a photo shoot out of an International Male catalog, but He did. [Editor-I don't know why Jesus would appear before me, a Neo-Pagan, and not, say, Apollo or Horus or Pan or some kind of Greenman.])  

Without a word, we embraced and He kissed me on both cheeks in a way that managed to have equal amounts of Agape, Amore, and Eros. 

[Editor-Around 2000, I was interested in exploring male-male Agape, or spiritual love; Amore, or romantic love; and, Eros, sexual love.  I think it would take a divinity to have equal, harmoniously mixed aspects of all three.  Jesus's washboard abs and that perfect, divine kiss -- which wordlessly said "Oh child of man, how could you not love with your spirit, your heart, and your body?" -- was the part of the dream that stayed with me, and re-reading it has reminded me of the next parts, which seem to be more and more from some crazed lost works of William Blake; I blame that long-ago margarita.]

"Look," He said, and pointed behind me.  I turned around and there was a wide river.  On my left, swimming upstream, was a white lamb.  It really had to work hard to make any progress.  "Gee, that's like what Leslie said about Pisces," I thought to myself.  "If they just go the right direction life is much easier for them."  I looked again and there were now five or seven lambs swimming in the water.  They were acting more like dolphins than lambs, swimming around in a bunch and playing, but still slowly working their way up stream.

Then I looked across the river to the other shore.  Huge (oak?) trees stood, leafless and covered in snow and ice.  "Oh," I said, realizing that on our side it was still sunny and warm, "this is important, and I need to remember it."

[Editor-at this point, the dream turns into crazy Book of Apocalypse stuff...]

Jesus then went on to explain that the world was going through some earth changes.  "There's actually one Power and three Intelligences for Earth," He said.  I had the impression that Jesus was one of the Intelligences, and that they took turns rotating jobs.  I had a vision of the globe with three lines - one green, one purple, one blue -wrapped around it.  I don't remember His words exactly, but somehow humanity's minds were going to be hooked up to a kind of computer network.  The blue line wrapping Earth lead off to a celestial background, and by small technological bugs, was routed into somebody's ears and nose.  In their eyes were bar and binary codes.  

Jesus continued to explain that the Internet would become a new technological Book of Judgement, and cyborg angels would judge one's acts.  Further wires lead out of the person's head and into a hovering, winged metallic figure -- who looked like something out of the Japanese animation, *Voltron*.  (No, I only saw *The Matrix* once, and it's been weeks since Mark and I watched *Voltron* on our way to Jackson Hole.)

I'm not sure what happened next, but I found myself in a café with my Black Book of Art, trying to find a place where I could write this all down.  It's possible this lead to the other dream segments.