Happy New Years.

A week or two ago I had a vivid dream. It coincided with several things that referenced it before its time. You could call them subconscious influences. One: I quoted the first sentence of The Divine Comedy a week or two before the dream. "Midway through my life." A friend wryly asked if I was going to die at fifty. Two: I stumbled across the book at a tiny Borders with a limited selection of classics. Three: I finished "The Legend of Deathwalker" by David Gemmell, within which the hero has to travel through hell alongside a lover to save his beloved.

I had a vivid dream that, at first, I was in hell. The devil was there. He made us all act out a play. We all had to memorize our lines and recite them in proper verse at proper time. I would stumble. Others would stumble. And every time we stumbled the devil would make us start the play over again. There was no escape.

After more than enough frustration I asked the devil what was keeping us bound to staying in hell until we perfected the verses. He replied with a dodging answer. I asked him again. He once again skirted around the question. Maybe a third time I asked him before I realized that he had no answer. So I called his bluff and I left.

Hell was the bottom of a grand spiral stairway. Intermediately, purgatory, as I walked up the stairway, a demon chased me from below. Somehow I was expecting it, and somehow I tricked it into - as I reached the top of the stairway - falling all the way down through the middle. I don't remember how. A subtle element of the dream.

Heaven was a cluttered attic. Full of lost causes. God was there. He hugged me. It took no merit. It took no righteousness of my own part. He merely hugged me.

The weight behind the implications of the components of this dream is heavy like a sandbag. It levels me when I am hit with it.

~

My current life situation is much like a private hell. Everyone around me feels like they have their own collection of rules for which I must live up to to appease.

I wonder where God is now. I wonder where the arms are which are merely waiting to hug me with no charge and for no merit.

Where is my grace.