Strange Dreams (Aren’t all of mine strange?)

And I dreamed a dream and no man could tell me the meaning thereof.

And I dreamed…

A thick smoke cloud hung over a dark and dirty beach. The waves out at sea seemed turbulent. Rather than a shore, the sand ended abruptly with a two foot drop. The waves hitting against the wall of sand were far more peaceful than the ones further out in the ocean.

And again I dreamed…

I was outside my old church. There was an event going on. I don’t know if it was a happy event (a birthday or wedding) or a sad one (such as a funeral). I know there were a lot of people there. A black limousine was parked outside and I was talking with the driver. I don’t remember the conversation, but it seems it was small talk. The people were almost done with the event inside. My mother was there and she told me where they would be coming out and I showed the limo driver where to park.

And again I dreamed…

I again was outside of my old church looking up at a blue sky. There were two dozen or so white birds flying in circles above me. I remember thinking "I hope one doesn’t decide it has to go to the bathroom with me down here". I began to notice that their tail feathers seemed rather long. And one swooped closer to view and I realized they were not birds but humanoids with wings who shined brightly when they were nearer to me.

And again I dreamed…

I was lying on my bed, in those moments between awake and asleep and when I closed my eyes I could again see the winged beings flying in circles over me. When I opened my eyes, there was only the bedroom ceiling. When I closed them, the blue sky with the circling angels (as I suppose they were). I again opened my eyes to the bedroom ceiling, but then a square of 1 foot in all directions opened and I could see the sky through my ceiling and still see one or two fly over before my eyes closed again.

And again I was standing outside my old church. The blue sky was now mostly empty except for two shapes. They were humans, female, in wingsuits, the kind you can glide with that make you look like a flying squirrel. They were landing on a trampoline to my left and then taking off on another current. They stopped long enough to introduce themselves, but in the dream I could not remember their names a split second after they told me. Neither were normal names. One started with an "A" and the other with a "V". The one whose name started with "V" seemed to be a bit flirtatious towards me.

I watched them take off again and noticed that high in the blue sky were two paths with a series of arrows all pointing in one direction. [In the waking world they would have been pointing North.] My thought was a reference to Stephen King’s "Dark Tower" series: "It is the path of the beam." Anything that crossed the paths (airplanes, birds, clouds) would be pushed in the direction they were pointing until it crossed their width. I remember feeling joy at seeing "the path of the beam". A purple streak flew out of the edge of my sight along one of the paths, erasing its existence as it went. A bluish-white ball of light followed a few seconds after, erasing the other path as it went. I watched them cross the sky and erase the "path of the beam" before they turned and began diving towards me. As they got closer, I could tell the purple was a cloud of gas, shaped like a manta ray. It began speaking to me as It got closer and I understood It to be God. The bluish-white ball of fire that was chasing the gas-cloud/manta ray/God was the Devil. They both kept flying over my head as I ducked out of the way. Gas-cloud/manta ray/God was talking to me at every pass though I don’t remember the conversation. I remember being afraid to let It hit me, not so much out of a terror sort of fear, but out of a reverential sort of fear that I was unworthy to touch even a figure of God. But since It kept passing so low, I had no choice but to keep ducking out of the way to avoid such contact. On the last pass, I jumped in the path of the bluish-white ball of fire that was the Devil and he stopped, seemingly out of shock that I’d be willing to do such a thing.

[And here’s where it gets really weird.]

Having stopped him in such a manner, the Devil gave himself a body in order to drive a car to continue the chase. It was a red ’80’s Pontiac Trans-am. I jumped on the hood and wrapped a large bath towel around all the windows so he couldn’t see out. When he tried to stick his head out of the window (with that stereotypical red face and horns look to it), I held him from getting out with one arm and began punching him with the other. When I saw punching him had no effect, I went to reach for my pocket knife (thinking "It’s in the wrong pocket" as it was in my left when I always carry it in the right pocket) with the intention of stabbing his eyes out to prevent him from seeing where the gas cloud/manta ray/God had gone. He began blowing bubbles of acid (as in the drug and not the corrosive type) that I kept trying to wipe away with the sleeve of my shirt with the arm I was holding him with. When the bubbles got to be too much, I pulled a white bandanna (something I haven’t owned in many years) to cover my face while still trying to hold him and get to my knife.

Then the dream just skips like a scratched record, and I’m still standing outside the church, watching some memorial video [actual video, as in VHS] for someone I don’t know. It never says in the video who it’s for. But there are some weird scenes with my wife’s cousin and her husband doing some sort of sketch comedy. I’m trying to figure out what’s supposed to be going on by looking at some program accompanying the video. I see the sections and subsections of it that are supposed to be telling me what the parts are about, but it’s in italicized cursive and I can’t read the font. I get the feeling it was for a man, but never find out if that was true.

The record skips again and I’m now at work, in full uniform, on a hovering personnel cart. I’m transporting a dark-haired woman. I know she is older than me, but looking at her, I can’t tell if she is 25 or 55, so I don’t know how I know. There’s no age to her face at all. But I sense she isn’t human. But it’s a feeling of peace that I get from her so I don’t question it. She sends me into a warehouse to find "a small object, purple, that feels heavier than it should". I drive this hovering personnel cart into the warehouse, get down and start looking through a large storage area. I find two small, purple objects, both heavier than they look like they should be. They look like small models of bathtubs made out of smoothly cut amethyst rock. I don’t know which one to take back to her. As I’m walking out with them, I pass some machinery that suddenly cuts off. I back up and it cuts back on. I hold one of the purple bathtub models towards the machines and nothing happens. I repeat the process with the other one, and the machines scramble then cut off again. They turn back on as soon as I pull away. I’m then left to assume that that is the real one, the one she wants. I feel it has some power, some sacred purpose.

But then I awa

ke and never get to find out who she was and what the object was for.

This dream is significant to me for several reasons:

1) It’s the first time I’ve ever dreamed about God in any form that I can remember.
2) While I’ve ran from the Devil, been the Devil’s minion and been the Devil himself in many dreams, this is the first I can remember actually fighting with the Devil (and having somewhat of an upper hand for most of it at that), though I have fought generic demons many times.
3) It’s the first time I’ve ever dreamed of "angels". (They were never expressly called that in the dream at any point, hence the quotation marks.)
4) First time for anything remotely resembling a manta ray.
5) First time I’ve ever dreamed about a "beam path" (though that one I at least somewhat get a waking relation to given that I’m on my 5th or 6th read through of the Dark Tower series and I’m on the part where they first come to the path of the beam).
6) This is the 3rd time I can remembering being on a dark and dirty beach and the 2nd where the water laps against a wall of sand rather than onto a sandy shore.
7) It’s the 1st time I can recall dreaming about my church. Thinking about it, it’s the 1st time I can recall dreaming about any church.
8) It’s the 1st time I have ever dreamed about a limo in any capacity.
9) 1st time for wingsuits.
10) I can’t recall white ever being such a prominent part of a dream. (White birds, white glowing angels, white bandanna. Pretty sure one of the wingsuits was white too, but I can no longer clearly recall if that was the case. I know at least one person was wearing a white T-shirt though.)
11) While not the first time I’ve dreamed of purple, it was more prominent in this dream than I ever remember in any other. (Purple gas cloud, purple bathtub looking objects, the mysterious woman was in a dress suit that was so dark a purple it was nearly black.)

Any mystics, psychologists, psychics, or any one else for that matter, who wants to take a stab at interpreting that, I’m all ears.

PS Though it ranks pretty high up there, it’s sadly still not the strangest dream I’ve ever had.