This afternoon, exhausted, I fell asleep.
I dreamed I was rollerblading around with a friend, and it
was like we were fugitives, or outlaws.
Most of the rollerblading was downhill, so we were going really
fast. At one point, we came upon all
these people watching a play. It seemed
to be set during the Roman Empire days, because there were Roman soldiers with
those funny centurian mohawk-hats. But
the play itself wasn’t funny. The soldiers
were rounding people up, arresting them.
Maybe it was in the days of the early Christian church when Christians
were often seen as subversives and outlaws, before Christianity became the
official religion of the Roman Empire, and the situation flipped.
Toward the end of the dream, my friend and I got caught by
some authorities around this big garbage dump.
For some reason, in the dream, I had the sense that our situation mirrored
the play—we were like the subversive Christians being captured by some larger
force of empire. As I stood there amidst
the garbage, I remember trying to give a kind of impassioned speech, denouncing
the crimes of the empire, but I could barely speak. It felt like those dreams where you are
trying to run away from some monster, but you can only run in slow motion. I was really struggling to get my words out,
but some larger invisible force was trying to silence me. And then I woke up.
My therapist Lisa often said it’s good to write about
your dreams, to explore what they might mean. Thinking about the dream, I
realized it was probably inspired by this book I’d just finished called
Liberation Theology, about this Catholic movement in Latin America in the
1960s, when priests started speaking out against the crimes of their
governments and American imperialism.
These Christ-following priests took the side of the exploited poor
instead of the rich and powerful.
Consequently, lots of priests in countries like Brazil, El Salvador,
Chile, and Guatemala were killed, tortured, and disappeared. It was this really fascinating moment in
modern history when some Christians actively took the side of the poor and
oppressed, just like in the days of the Roman Empire.
I think my nap dream this afternoon was inspired by Latin
American liberation theology.
