Or Perhaps It's The Chicken Soup

Or perhaps it’s chicken soup I ate that one evening. Oh. Maybe a year and a half ago. I think it was chicken soup, but it could have been chicken stew. I had the slow cooker then. I think. So it might have been more of a stew than a soup because I like a chunky kind of a soup.

A substantial sort of a soup. A soup that will stick to your ribs type of deal. A soup that will last all day if need be and well into the next if push comes to shove. A soup you can sink your teeth into, if you will. A carnivorous soup, so to say. The soup that ate New York City. Or the soup that fed New York City, I should say. One pot feeding the multitudes. Feeding the millions. That kind of a soup.

But maybe it was a chicken sandwich. It could have been. A year and half’s a long time in these fast paced times. A lot happens every day. Hard to keep track, exactly. What I do know is that it definitely involved chicken. Little beady eyed beasts anyway. Little primitive sharp-toothed little. Nothing behind the beady eyes except a hunger and a meanness and a lot of nervous energy. A lot of nervous and jerky noisiness and movement. A random kind of movement around the barnyard. Around the barnyard and nearby fields.

A free range type of situation. A freedom of choice if you will. That kind of humane treatment. That sort of kindness to the mindless little beady-eyed creatures. Little mean-spirited peckish creatures. Before they’re slaughtered. Before they’re transformed from a feathered bipedal noise into soup, let’s say. Or stew. Or a sandwich. But I digress.

What I’m getting at is the dream. The dream that followed the soup or the stew or the sandwich or whatever it was. They say old men dream dreams and young men have visions. That’s a nice way of thinking about things, if it’s true. Well it’s probably nice whether it’s true or not. Letting old men like myself have our dreams. Allowing as how we may have our dreams.

Anyone can have a dream, you know. Whether or not it says so in a book. You, for example. You. Whether you are old or young or somewhere in between may have a dream. You may have more than one dream. In fact, you are permitted to dream promiscuously, if you will. You have a free range freedom yourself to dream to your heart’s content, if that’s what you like to do.

If that’s the direction your feet take you. Or your mind, really, isn’t it. If that’s a direction your free range mind wants to lead you. But as I say. I digress. What I want to talk about is a particular dream of mine. Why. Well, it’s interesting. To me certainly. Perhaps to you. I don’t know.

But what the dream means. Ahhhh. That’s another question. I have no idea. I mean, it’s pretty clear what the plain meaning is. But what is the deeper meaning. What is trying to be got at by someone or something or God or whoever at the deeper levels of the universe is anybody’s guess. But here I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m outrunning the telling of the thing.

Here’s the dream: “Serve the Father’s house.”

That’s the whole thing. No visuals. You’d think in this video age there would have been some visuals. But no. That’s just the sort of dream I would have. A dream that is visionless and that is just. Well. Words. Words and words alone. Delivered with a certain authority. A command, really. No wiggle room there, apparently. No outs. Serve the Father’s house. Well.

Does this mean the church I’m attending, I wonder. The church I was attending at the time and still attend is actually called The Father’s House. So. So does what I’m being told connect with this, do you think. Does this dream mean that I should serve my particular church or the church in general. Church with a capital C.

Does it mean I’m not serving either my particular church very well or the big C church very well. And that I should get on the stick. Get on the ball. Get going, in other words. Put my shoulder to the wheel, so to say. Put my shoulder to the bumper, rather. Since putting my shoulder to the wheel could actually be pretty dangerous. And God wouldn’t want me to do anything very dangerous would he. Well.

Maybe he would, come to think of it. Think of all the people in the Bible. The people there he talked to and asked to do dangerous things. So there’s precedent. There’s plenty of reason to think. Well. He’s not so concerned about my danger. He’s not so concerned about my particular free range chicken comfort.

Think about David, for example. Being chased from piller to post by King Saul. Murder in his heart. His little chicken heart. Or think of the Apostles, for example. Who all died martyrs. Many of whom died quite bloody deaths. Quite messy deaths. Like so many chickens running around the barnyard without their heads, for example. Spouting blood all over the place. Well, then. Well.

And the dream. Back to the dream, just to fill you in. It was morning. It was before the alarm was set to go off, and those words were said audibly. I heard them. And then I was wide awake. Totally awake. Completely out of sleep mode now. And on my feet by the side of my bed. A featherless biped. Listening. Cocking my head. Listening. What more, I’m thinking. What more.

Now, you might think, what more does he need to know. What on earth more does he need to know. He’s been told what to do. He has his marching orders. So why doesn’t he march. Why doesn’t he get the lead out. Why isn’t he serving the Father’s house. And all I can say is I am. Or I’m trying to. Maybe I’m not doing such a hot job. Maybe I can do better. But this is to some extent what I am in fact doing. And this is the thing that’s driving me right round the bend.

If that is God, what in the heck is he saying. It would be one thing if he had said, “Keep doing what you’re doing. What you’re doing is the right thing to do. Serving in my house is what you’re doing, and I want you to keep doing that.” But no. Noooooo. That isn’t what I heard. What I heard him say was, “Serve the Father’s house.” That’s all I know, and it’s driving me loony. Absolutely wacky and quirky. Clucky and random. So this mystical shmystical. This mystical shmystical life. It also can be this kind of thing.