DreamBroker

A gilt and rather dusty wooden sign stuck out over the sidewalk in front of the door of 23B Liver Street. The door, much like the sign, needed a good washing and a new coat of paint—the original coat of which had been deep blue and sported a flaking pattern of silver stars. The sign, in ornate copperplate, read: Dream Distillery.

The door stood a single step above the sidewalk, and a young man sat on the step with his back against the door and his shoulders hunched deep inside his coat, which was good quality wool. The suit he wore beneath was just as well-made, neatly tailored and paired with a set of shiny hand-sewn shoes. The man started as the door to 23A opened with the tinkling of a bell and a woman stepped onto the street. She paid him no attention as she passed, preoccupied with the package in her hands, and he sank back down again.

He drew a finger through the fine sand that covered the step where he sat. It glittered slightly on his fingertip as he lifted it for inspection.

At the corner of the street, a streetlamp flickered to life with the coming dusk. Cars passed the entrance to the street but rarely turned down Liver Street itself. Another streetlamp came to life and another, until they lit the whole street of stone building fronts and inset doorways. Still, he waited until at last he heard the turn and click of the lock opening behind him.

He scrambled to his feet without bothering to brush the sand from his pants.

“Ah, Mister Darien,” said a voice with a slight Scandinavian accent. “I hope you have not been waiting long. Do come in.”

Mister Darien stepped hurriedly inside and shoved the door closed behind him. “It didn’t work,” he said in a clipped, angry voice as he drew a small vial of dark liquid from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Haven’t you got anything stronger?”

“Stronger,” said the shopkeeper as he moved down the hall and through the second door into a small room lit by a single lamp with a dark green shade. “I do not think you would like anything stronger. Terrifying things—-”

Darien slammed the little vial down on the desk in the circle of light made by the lamp. “Listen. This doesn’t work. I’ll pay whatever you want. Just give me the strongest you’ve got.” In the shadows of the room, his face was lit ghoulishly by the light reflected from the surface of the desk.

“Very well,” muttered the other man, moving through the gloom along the shelves. “The strongest I’ve got. Just as you say.”

A clink of glass and a liquid sloshing followed. Then the shopkeeper returned to the desk with a vial even smaller than the first filled with liquid as thick as molasses and blacker even than coal.

Darien swept it up and tucked it into his coat before dropping a tight roll of bills onto the desk.

“Use it carefully—” the man began in warning.

Darien muttered an impolite remark and left through the door of faded stars. He slammed into a younger man who stood to one side of the step, so hard that he sent the other man sprawling off the curb and into the street. He muttered another curse as he hurried toward the end of the street. In his hurry, he neglected to close the door all the way, and it with its silver stars swung gently open again into the hall.

At the same time, a distant roll of thunder preceded a sudden spot of rain. The man picked himself up from the pavement and studied the abraded palms of his hands as he moved into the shelter of the building. Overhead the gilt and dust sign creaked in a chill gust of wind that swirled down the seat, gathering the detritus of the day. A paper kite in the shape of a carp with scales of blue and gold and green was caught in the gust and went swimming neatly down the street until its trailing string tangled about a decorative arm of the lamppost. The kite swung about, tail and fins fluttering, its sides moving in lifelike rhythm.

He smiled at the sight until another burst of heavy raindrops bore the paper fish to the ground and turned it into a shapeless, pulpy mass. A warm breath of air ran across the back of his neck from the doorway.

“Do you mean to stand in the door all night? If you do, you might have the decency at least to come in and close the door.”

The young man started at the voice and turned quickly. “I’m sorry,” he said and stepped out into the rain and wind, which had become in a moment, a raging downpour.

“Are you waiting for someone?” the voice asked, appearing embodied in a small, wrinkled man. “Come inside before you’re soaked through.”

The young man moved gratefully into the small hallway with water already dripping from his sleeves. “I don’t mean to bother you,” he said. He looked back at the storm. The shopkeeper pushed the door closed. At once, the crash of rain was lost.

“I am never bothered,” the man replied. “Won’t you come in?” He opened the first door in the hall into a pleasant library-like room with comfortable chairs set near a crackling fire and thick carpets of stunning patterns overlapping on the stone floor. Lanterns of colored glass hung from the ceiling on loops of silver chain. The room smelled of warm cookies and coffee.

“Won’t you sit?” the shopkeeper asked, waving the young man toward the chairs.

The young man moved across the room. He felt as though he should be thoroughly disoriented and stifled by the colors and patterns between the carpets and the lanterns, not to mention the staggering intricacy of the wallpaper. Instead, he felt a sense of comfort so deep that he was nearly asleep as soon as he sat down. He thought, just for a second, that something glittered in front of him like a dust motes in sunlight or a glitter of sand. Then his eyes were closed.

He slept there until morning, dreaming delicious dreams of a fantastic wood where he could turn into a bird at will and soar through the branches up to the clouds or, if he dove into the water, he became a sleek, glittering carp with scales of green and gold and blue, and he slid along the bottom of the lake past a tiny kingdom of crawfish at war with a nearby country of water slugs. Then he went up, up and up again and burst from the surface of the water as a great cat. The water became moss beneath his paws. He strode through a jungle of dense shadows braided with vines and full of the chirping of insects and the calls of birds. As he surveyed the jungle, he heard a voice that did not belong there. It was a sweet, silver chime of a voice that sand a melody sweeter than honey, and it filled him with the most wonderful sense of longing.

He found the singer, a maiden with long coils of silver-green hair falling all about her as she sat on a large red toadstool with her feet tucked up neatly beneath her. He had become a man again by then, but found himself still as brave as the tiger when her eyes met his. Her eyes were drops of lavender. She leaned forward with a laugh and kissed him so her eyelashes brushed his cheek. Then she morphed into a butterfly with wings of silver green and two spots of deep lavender. She swooped once around his head before she fluttered away.

He woke from his dreams easily, still so filled with a sense of wonder and awe that he could see, without trying, the shopkeeper’s shape was little more than a facade. Behind it there was a power older than stories and legends, and if it had not been so sweet and peaceful, he might very well have been terrified.

“Did you sleep well?” asked the shopkeeper, and he was once again just a little wrinkled man in a small, strange shop.

“Yes, thank you,” the young man said as he roused himself. “I—I would very much like to come back again.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I know where to find you.”

“You do?” He blinked as he got to his feet and noticed quite suddenly, the ceiling, which was covered in splendid murals that seemed almost to speak of his dream.

“Yes, quite, but you’d best be along now. The storm has ended.”

The young man walked to the door to the hall and heard footsteps just outside as he opened the door. A wrinkled little shopkeeper stood before him, as near a copy as the one behind him as was possible.

“Oh,” said the one behind. “My brother. No need for you to meet him just yet. He’s always about on his business. He has more work, nearly, than I do.”

As easily as the transition in a dream, the young man found himself on the step outside of 23B Liver Street. The door, with its silver stars, shone in the rain-washed morning light. He thought back on his dream, of the feel of the wind beneath his wings, and the water against his scales and the moss beneath his paws, and remembered the soft kiss of the butterfly. And he smiled.

Behind him, the sign with its gilt letters hung still on its post, so the sunlight caught the words and set them ablaze.

***

Note: This story is loosely based on the legend of Ole Lukøje, or the Sandman. Also, this is a semi-companion story to one from last year. Read it here! 23A Liver Street

Exciting news! I've had a short story and a sketch published in the third edition of MavGuard Magazine, which you can buy here: http://www.rad-writing.com/store/

Abandoning Christmas

What if we didn't celebrate Christmas at all? What if as an entire Christian community we decided to say, "Okay, World. This holiday is yours. Obviously, as many of you will no doubt point out, it was your idea from the beginning. So here you go. Take it back. We won't interfere with your decorations, your choice of greeting or your frenzied sales. Do whatever you like. We can't control you, and we don't want to."

I don't mean this to sound facetious. I wonder if we could actually do it, and I wonder how the world would change if we did. I think some Christians (and I myself have occasionally though this way) feel that if we abandon a holiday to the secular world, to their strange icons of fat men or giant rabbits, we will have lost foothold and given the enemy another beachhead in this vast war for souls. I would counter by asking what good we have done thus far in clinging to a tattered idea of a sacred day that has been warped to the point that it does not in any way resemble the grace and holiness that it was meant to celebrate. We forget, I think, that Christmas is a man-made celebration, and like everything made by men, it will go awry. God did not mandate that his people keep it sacred. He did not command, "Thou Shalt Remember Christmas and Keep It Holy." No. He did not. 

By the very appearance of Christ in human time and form, God was removing the obstacles and veils that separated the holy from the unholy. By the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, he allows us (the unholy) access to him (the most holy), every single second of every day of the year. There is no reason at all why December 25th ought to be more important than May 23rd or July 2nd. Jesus Christ was indeed born at a fixed point in time, but only so he could then save us all from the darkness and pain of death throughout the rest of eternity.

So what if we gave up Christmas? What if we abandoned it to the spoils of the world and concerned ourselves with other things? Honestly, I don't think the world would notice, except to sigh in relief as the whingeing and controversy dies away. But what if we took all the money and time and effort we spend on worrying and preparing for this one holiday and spent it on someone in our community instead? A homeless man, a heartbroken co-worker, a frazzled mother.

To clarify, I don't think celebrating Christmas is bad or wrong or somehow unChristian. We mean well. Honestly, I think, we do. But we are seeking in a human construction once again a sacredness, a sense of peace and belonging that only God can give.

Time, as I was reminded the other night, is precious. We have it in limited supply. We ought to give a great deal of thought to how and why we do what we do in order to avoid squandering what time we have. And it seems to me we could do a great deal of good if we stopped celebrating Christmas as a single day and started living as if the reason we were celebrating were actually and truly a part of our lives every day of the year.

So from me to you, have a very merry holiday season.

Reaching for the Divine

I stretch empty hands

Reach for something to save me

There

Where time and space end 

A glimpse beyond the infinite

Enough

To disclose the unknown

To illuminate the unseen

Light brilliant 

Radiant

Divine

Unreachable

Hands

Stretch out for me

Reach past the dark to save me

There

Time and space are pierced

The infinite becomes small

Hope is born in a child

Merciful

Loving

Savior

I have no greater comfort than this

To know that Jesus Christ has saved me

He finds me when I am lost and alone

Forgives me when I am sinful

And has never left me forgotten or unloved

Waiting on Prince Charming

I grew up on fairytales. Not the Grimm kind, but the Disney kind. Where Prince Charming comes sweeping out of the dark to defeat imminent evil and save the princess. I loved it. I love that dashing kind of romance where true love is proved by action, not just words. As I got older I came to appreciate the kind of romance you find when Mr. Darcy helps Elizabeth Bennet's family, without telling her, because he loves her. It's the same kind of love that makes Jane stay with Mr. Rochester when he's blind and scarred. Great feats of self-sacrifice without demanding anything in return. True love. I want you to understand this before I tell you what I'm going to tell you next, so you know that really I do like the idea of falling in love and marriage and Happily Ever After, and if I were ever allowed to be I would be the soppiest kind of romantic possible.

I've never been kissed. Wait. Let me rephrase that. I've chosen not to kiss anyone until my wedding day. This isn't something new I just came up with. I made this promise (I like to think of it as a vow) when I was 13 years old. Yes, I've had boyfriends. No, I never kissed any of them, and I don't regret it. Because I don't want run-of-the-mill romance that begins and ends in the dating stage. I want the kind that lasts until I'm 80 and wrinkly, and he has gray hair (or no hair at all) and crazy eyebrows. And, believe it or not, girls, you can't make someone love you, by kissing them. Nor does the fact that he is kissing you prove that he is, in any way, in love with you. I could go on for quite a while on what love actually is, but I think I'll save that for another post.

In my own experience, and I've heard this from a boyfriend as well, taking out the physical part of the relationship makes it much easier to focus on who the other person actually is. There's no surprise there. Physical attraction dumps enough chemical signals into the bloodstream that adding a physical relationship as well can completely overwhelm whatever common sense things your brain is trying to tell you, putting you into a self-induced high. (This is one of the many reasons your friends and your family are probably a better judge of your date than you are.)

Okay. Don't panic. I'm not saying you have to follow in my footsteps. I know the idea of being nearly three decades old and never having kissed anyone isn't exactly ideal. But I do suggest you pick a line, a very distinct line, that you will not cross. Make a promise and, boy or girl, respect yourself enough to keep it. Society is going to tell you that you're a freak, and  your friends probably won't understand. So be prepared to stand up for yourself. You will save yourself so much trouble and heartache, and you'll be glad of it when you find yourself in your Happily Ever After.

On another note, I once joked that I would kiss whoever I wanted if I turned 30 and wasn't married. It was just a joke, people. I'm 17 years in, so I can't see going back on my promise now. I'm going to hold out for the real thing, and if it never happens, I'm okay with that. A bit disappointed, perhaps, because who wouldn't want someone performing feats of self-sacrifice for them, but okay. Better than okay, because one person already has sacrificed himself for me. And he is more than enough.

Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised.
Song of Solomon 8:7

Speaking Grace

As a single woman, I've been hurt time and again by things that people have said clearly not understanding the weight of their words in an area where I'm already struggling to be content. Things like "Why aren't you married yet?", "Are you looking for someone?", "What you need to do is...". But even more than that, it's the unspoken but overarching sense of "I understand you, because I was single once, but you couldn't possibly understand me, because you've never been married/don't have children/etc."

I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way. There are numerous posts and blogs from people in all walks and places in life dedicated to the idea of what someone should or should not say to someone else. However, I don't want this to turn into one of those rants. Because the bottom line is this: I can't control what anyone else says or does to me.

So, to avoid unnecessary irritation, I need to focus on how I talk to other people and how I respond to people who say things that are hurtful, either purposefully or inadvertently, or prying or just plain annoying.

This is where mercy comes in heaps and handfuls. It isn't always easy to overlook an offense, but it's a lot easier when we consider the offenses that God has not simply overlooked, but wiped clean on our part.

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." Ephesians 4:32 

Notice this verse doesn't say anything about someone asking for forgiveness. It just says to do it. Give mercy.

But what if someone really did mean to hurt me? What if it was intentional and spiteful and they are always doing the same thing?

Fortunately, it's quite simple, whether the slight was intentional or not doesn't make the least bit of difference in how I am supposed to react to it. I have one response to learn and to learn well. Forgive them.

"To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" 1 Corinthians 6:7

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Philippians 2:3-4

"For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment." James 2:13

"Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins." 

1 Peter 4:8

So that deals with the side of things where I'm the victim, but what if I'm the offender? What if I inadvertently say something that gives offense? Obviously, the best option is to try to avoid that situation. In a world where opinions are given unwanted and often unneeded, it isn't a bad idea for me to slow down, stop imagining that my answers are going to save the world from imminent doom, and speak grace, relying on God to give me the words that particular someone needs to hear.

"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." Ephesians 4:29

"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person." Colossians 4:6 

Assurance

I currently have the cheapest health insurance and car insurance that it is possible to have, meaning that if anything ever does happen, I'm going to have a pretty big deductible. That's okay with me. I'd rather save my money myself than rely on insurance to take care of me. Of course, when it comes right down to it, I'm not depending on my savings or my IRA either. Because there is one inherent flaw with that kind of insurance against disaster, namely that it relies on what I do.

The very word insurance implies that I must take some kind of step beforehand to ensure that I am taken care of if or when a disaster happens. And no matter how well I plan, there is no way I will ever be able to take every possibility into account. If I were capable of such a task, I have the feeling I would spend my time being so cautious and worried about what might happen that I would forget completely about living.

Wonderfully for me (and all of you), this isn't the way salvation works. God doesn't insure us against future disaster. Salvation isn't a contract of, "I give you this much, and you give me this much if such and such occurs under these given circumstances." If it were, I would, once again, be driven to madness by the worry of what might happen in the future. I mean, what if my premium isn't paid in full when I suddenly get hit by a bus? I know for sure the bill would bankrupt my eternity.

God doesn't deal in insurance. Instead, he has given assurance of salvation through the death and resurrection of his son, and in his sending of the Holy Spirit. Assurance, unlike insurance, does not require action on my part aside from acceptance. To assure someone, means to remove all doubt from their mind, to promise that what is hoped for will happen. A promise. From God. There isn't anything more solid than that. So I can rest in peace, knowing that even if and when the worst (illness, persecution or loss) does happen, I have the assurance of my God that he will take care of me, whether or not (more likely, not) I've met my deductible.

"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full of assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of faith without wavering, for he who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:19-23

Rails

Beliefs are the rails upon which our lives run.
We almost always act according to what we really believe.
It doesn't matter much what we say we believe or what we want others to think we believe...
That is why behavior is such a good indicator of a person's beliefs.
 - J.P. Moreland

   This made me stop and ask myself: what do I really believe? I know what I want to believe or what I say I believe, but if I look at my actions, what do they say I believe? The answer makes me want to flinch, because if I'm honest with myself, it's more than a little painful.

    If I truly believe a loving God is in complete control, not only of the universe but of my life individually, and if I completely trust him to take care of me and to work for the best in line with his perfect will, then I will be secure in where I am and what I am doing. I will not panic at unexpected circumstances, because I will know that while they were unexpected to me, God was not surprised, and his plan is still working as it should. I will not complain, because I would realize that the best growth comes through hard times and difficult situations, and, of course, that complaining never helped anything anyway. I will not cry out at the unfairness of life or lose myself in self-pity, because I won't be focusing on myself, I'll be looking to God. If I truly believe...

   But I do panic, I do complain, I do spend far too many nights crying because I'm alone, and life just isn't fair---and---and---

   So what do I believe? According to my actions, I believe that God cares about big things and great works, like countries and salvation, but not my every day, individual life. That somehow, in the midst of everything, I was forgotten, because I'm not important enough to merit the kind of attention that say, a missionary or civil rights leader, anyone with a more important calling than mine, would get. That because I'm not where I wanted to be, God must not care.

   And that's wrong. I know it's wrong. If God didn't care about normal, individual people, then none of my faith would make sense at all. It is my fault that my expectations were not where God wanted them to be. My fault and not God's that I was not prepared for my life to end up where it is. My fault that I don't look to him when I need help rather than looking down at the mire and bewailing my unlucky state. But how can I change beliefs that I didn't even know I had? I already know the truth. That isn't the issue. But how do I take what I know is true and make it what my heart (or my kidney, if you want to be Biblically accurate) believes?

   If beliefs are rails, then to change my beliefs, I'm going to have to do some heavy lifting. I'm going to need rails and ties, reason and time and a lot of prayer, and every time I start rolling down the tracks, I'm going to have to consciously move the switch, to say "I believe, help my unbelief!", to remind myself about what I know, until what I know is what I believe, and what I believe is what I do.

1. J.P. Moreland, "Living Smart," in Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics, ed. Paul Copan et al. (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2007), 25.