This is a first, at least that I can remember. Last night as I was dreaming, I remember singing a song. It’s a song I’ve never heard, but as I sang it, I knew it well. I was in church with a group of young men (I must have been in my 20s or 30s in the dream if I was their age). There was this Pentecostal preacher kind of preaching a sermon, kind of on a recruiting mission to find someone to guest preach for him. He was screaming and hollering, all caught up in the spirit. He was telling us how difficult it is to deliver a sermon that has emotional impact in just 20 minutes, but he was looking for one of us to try. We had to try to make the congregation feel the emotion we were trying to convey simply by using our words. I didn’t care for his style of preaching and noted how he used so much time and so many words, just setting things up before he got to his point. I would not make that mistake.
I was sitting on the very back row. He came back to where a group of us were and began to point to candidates to stand up. I was thinking “I can do it. I can share my pain in 20 minutes and get people to feel it.” So, I was hoping he would call on me. But, when he pointed to me and asked me to stand, I felt doubt as I rose to my feet. Did I really want to do this?
The ones he pointed to all stood and we began singing a song. I felt an intense angst. It was palpable, right in the center of my chest. I literally physically felt it sitting there. It was the epitome of ambivalence. I knew that I could never be happy as long as I lived in this world, but I was not ready to go to the next one. For now, I had to be here. I was caught in between and it was ripping me apart. As we rose to our feet, we formed a circle of hands like we do in church on Sundays when we sing the peace song. We stood where we were and joined hands in a loop. I can’t remember the words to the song. It was to the tune of Rag N Bone Man’s Innocent Man. All I can remember is:
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.
da da da, da da da… but it’s closer than you think.
da da da, da da da…. no matter how far you roam.
da, da da, da da da… but have you ever heard of Home?
His lyrics are:
It’s not my crime, so why do I have to pay?
I’m doing time, this feeling I can’t shake
I’m lost in the suffering for nothing
My heart don’t understand
It’s beating for an innocent man
