Batch

01-23-2013 -- I'm on some sort of church camping trip with Mike Sullins and the gang. I'm not sure, but I think I was an adult for the whole dream, kind of helping to oversee the trip, and it has been an OK trip, but not fabulous. We're loading up the bus to head back to the church, and I find myself trying to half claim one of the front seats. I am given the front bench on the passenger side, which is fine. Some little kid who may be the pastor's son is given the spot just under the bar that I used to love as a kid, but it doesn't bother me as I couldn't fit there as an adult, anyway.

Mike is driving, and the trip home from the usual camp (from dreams, didn't go camping with this church in real life) seems very short, only taking around 45 minutes, when it always seemed the trip used to take 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Soon we're pulling into the church parking lot, and starting to unload the bus, while waiting for parents to come and pick their kids up. I'm probably waiting for everybody else to be picked up, before I get a ride home on the bus.

Mike is going on and all about how good the Boy Scouts are, and how great the trip was, and stuff like that. He seems to be dressed in a scout master uniform, and the pastor's son is in a scout uniform. But something is said that seems to tick the kid off, and he suddenly stalks out of the room, down the driveway, and out to curb on Page Avenue.

He starts angrily calling for his dad, the pastor, who is standing about 20 feet away, but doesn't seem to hear him. This amazes me since I am much further away, and inside the building, but I can hear him just fine. After three loud calls, his father hears him, and walks over and picks him up. He talks to him and comforts him a bit, then puts him back in the room where I am waiting around.

The boy is maybe four or five, and he starts playing with a little girl who is maybe six or seven. Soon they're wrestling a bit, and there seem to be hints of Indian Wrestling in their play, but other forms of wrestling, as well. Somehow it overflows, and I am something of an innocent bystander, as I soon find myself lying on the ground, half-restrained, with them undoing my pants for some reason.

Right at that moment, the assistant pastor busts in, and starts ranting and raving, and wants to know what the Sam Hill is going on! I think he feels something wrong, sexually, is going on, as they are undoing my pants, and I try to defend myself by saying maybe I should have put a stop to things sooner, but I wouldn't have let it go any further if they had tried to pull down my pants, but he seems to blame the kids and feels they are being very evil, and I am only being foolish.

"What if they'd used super glue on you?" He demands. "It could have taken us hours to free you. Or even days if we couldn't get the proper solvent!" He keeps ranting on and on about how bad the kids were, and how could I have allowed this, and it is the story oh Jonah and the Whale all over again! I don't see it as the same thing at all. I don't see how that story ties in, and I don't see any of it as all that bad, but he just won't listen at all.

Finally I have had enough, and like the kid before me, I stalk out of the the room, step over a tiny fence (maybe a foot or a foot and a half tall, more decorative than anything else), and to the curb on Page Avenue, just like the pastor's son, before me. The assistant pastor is calling after me, trying to stop me from going, and not getting why I was so upset with him, but I won't listen, and I keep on my way. I walk down Page to Stanton, then walk under the freeway overpass, before making my way down Calendula and into the flower tract.

I don't know what the big deal is ... I don't agree with the guy, but its not like I don't still plan to attend church next week, or anything. But strange things are happening. People start trying to push me or grab me. The area is turning into a cross between a sort of an old age home and an apartment complex, though the entire neighborhood I am walking through is nothing but single family homes. But somehow I find myself in the apartment complexes behind the church, instead of in the neighborhood I was walking through. [The apartment complexes that aren't there in real life, but have been in lots of dreams.]

In past dreams these apartment complexes have had fun things and nightmare-style things happen in them. In this dream, they are bad things. I find myself arguing religion and politics with people, while going through unpleasant chase bits that seem to go on forever (though I think they really are pretty short.) At one point I am being grabbed an restrained by nurses because they don't agree with my principles, but soon they are turning into attractive-but-old-fashioned school teachers who have a sort of Stepford Wives sort of vibe to them.

I burst out of one apartment complex into a sort of hilly area, where I find myself trying to cross the hills while avoiding dangerous flaming horses. Since they are in groups of four, they just might be the four horses of the apocalypse. Strange and spooky. At first I try to hide from them, but then I find four of them right next to me in a wide open space, so all I can do is ignore them and hope they ignore me, or if they don't, hope I'm powerful enough to survive them.

The entire time, both political and spiritual arguments continue to go on in my head. I manage to get out of the hills and into another of the apartment complexes, but I'm still being chased by the old-fashioned brunettes, who are trying to wrestle me to the ground and restrain me. I don't understand why I find myself saying it, since it still seems to me that he was the nut, and the one in the wrong, but I suddenly speak out loud and say "Fine! I'll apologize to the assistant pastor."

A gap appears in the brick-wall corridor I am in, and I stumble into the lot of the construction supply company directly behind the church, free from all the people chasing me. "On Sunday, after church," I mutter to myself. 50 pound bags of cement start dropping on me. "OK, OK, right now." The cement stops dropping on me, and I claim over the brick wall into the church parking lot.

I approach one of the elders of the church and ask where the assistant pastor is, and he says he left about 15 minutes ago. He looks at me and says something like "You don't look like a process server, but I'm still not going to tell you where he lives or give you his phone number." I end up back in the same room, waiting (perhaps for a day or two) until the assistant pastor shows up again. "Really, God?!?" I kind of announce to the sky.

"Hey Dude! Don't disrespect the Lord!" I find a slightly angry hippie kind of shushing me. "Yeah? Let me tell you a story!" And I proceed to relate the entire dream to him, while he looks more and more flabbergasted as I go on. There are several others here, who also look more and more shocked. As I finish my tale, I look at them, all staring at me in amazement, and ask "Don't tell me the same thing happened to all of you?"

"Oh no, man," the hippie says. "Nothing like that happened to me. Not in the specifics. But in the overall, yeah, man. We're all here to apologize to the assistant pastor because we wouldn't listen to him, man! It's weird!"