Dave's dream

*

After eating too much fatty gunk in the late hours, Dave tossed and kneaded himself through the night, making no headway on the twisting road to rest, because even rest had become painful.

When morning finally came, he tipped himself almost into wakefulness but couldn't make the last twist. At 7 he dreamed that he was in a restaurant facing a plate of chicken that still had a mouth attached -- it pecked his hand and face, it wouldn't lie still. His own food was eating him. The dream went on and on, even as its minutes should have thinned into the breathable air of daytime logic -- because none of this could ever possibly happen. They wouldn't take the plate away. He woke panting and late for the food closet where he would be volunteering.

When he told a client about the dream, the man understood it instantly, the way "ordinary" middle class people never do. You may have gotten a warning not to eat any more meat, the man said. There's a chance that maybe a thousand Christians all over the country had the same dream at the same time.

It was as though the man too had had the dream.

Prayer is no trouble at all, it happens completely naturally, whenever you are terrified.

*