Kirkepiscatoid

One of the things that always gets my mind to wandering during Advent and Christmas is all the emphasis on "visitations, visions, and prophecy." As a liturgical "non-apocalyptic-don't-even-talk-to-me-about-the book of Revelation" Christian, I just simply have a hard time with all the angels, visitations, and prophecy stuff in the texts during this season. It's hard for me to make the jump between, "This stuff happens in the Bible and everyone goes, 'sure, ok,' and when people claim it to happen now, we think, 'what kind of kook are you, and do you need 96 hours observation?'"

I am absolutely convinced that if benzodiazapines and SSRI's were available in the Middle Ages, we would not have half the saints we have. What we now would think of as "pretty hefty mental illness," people of the day saw as touched by God...not touched in the head. It becomes pretty easy to say "this does not happen to me, this does not happen in a reasonable, rational world."

This also is complicated by the fact that the ancients saw the line between these things as much blurrier. I think they were less likely to question their dreams and visions, saw them as more "natural," and did not have to worry about the Jungian interpretation of their dreams. They simply took these phenomena to heart and acted/didn't act upon them.

Yet people are absolutely fascinated by paranormal phenomena (A&E channel makes a good living off of it, in fact), and literature ranging from religious magazines to the National Enquirer carry stories of angels and visions. We do this weird dance between "believe" and "don't believe", and we are far more likely to "believe" when it happens to someone else.

I am always thinking in things like Luke's story of the angel Gabriel in "Yeah, ok, whatever," terms. But what I am slowly coming to realize is that things as simple as human insight can be "visitations" in their own right. I have had very interesting dreams in the past. I have had moments that I could see things in my mind during prayer. But maybe I cheapen them by refusing to think of them as "visitations" in some form. I am too scientific. I can rattle on and on about dopamine and neurotransmitters and endorphins and explain away every one of them. Sure, I can accept the power of a Lakota vision quest. But I would be quick to say the endorphins and neurotransmitters are the "cause."

In my adult life, I have had only three dreams in which ever woke me up wondering if something happened even close to a visitation in a religious sense. In two of them, I was "chatting up God." The funny part is God looked like George Burns. (Yeah, I see you laughing.) In the other, I dreamed that I was "being snuggled in bed by an angel" in which I was not allowed to see the angel's face. It was not sexual, but it was comforting in a "non-sexual, sensual way." The odd part was I could only see the angel's distal forearm and hand, and I remember that body part appeared "trustworthy" to me, so I did not panic in the dream.

I can explain away all of them, and have...multiple times. I can very easily dismiss these as my facile, fertile mind being allowed to romp and play in the arms of Morpheus, where the usual stimuli of the day are absent. Neurotransmitters on holiday.

But here is where the gap between those Biblical visitations and my weird dreams closes a bit.

In all three instances, I did something different as a result of those dreams. I acted upon them. In all three instances, acting upon them brought an unexpected delight in my life.

I won't go into the details; let's just say they are mine and God's, as are the "what I did's" when I acted upon them. But all three dreams caused me to break a pattern, with rewarding results...and maybe THAT is the deal with all of this stuff.

Maybe the real story in Biblical dreams and visions is the backstory that the object of the visitation did something differently. Maybe the true test of this stuff is "Wha'dja do with it afterwards?"

This thought has deepened my notions about these phenomena a bit. I am starting to learn to care less about the hows and whys and the "how true is this" stuff and looking more at outcome.

The phenomena, whatever they are, are catalysts for change and metamorphosis, and if these are good changes, then who cares?