Last night I dreamed of living in another
world, and the most
vivid memory I have from that world was my last before waking.
I was on a stone wall, watching festivities in the meadow. There was a burst of confetti, and some of it drifted over and fell near me. Then a girl came, one of those annoying, peppy, helpful, Martha Stewart types. She gave me a piece of the confetti - it was made of dark green cardstock folded over, and inside it was printed "Jesus has saved you." I didn't want it, so I threw it away from me.
As I walked along the wall I thought of this new mode of witnessing that forced others to accept or reject Christian beliefs symbolically with the acceptance or rejection of a slip of paper. I came upon a bush with similar folded-over papers either growing out of or tucked into it among its leaves. I knew there was only a matter of time before my parents gave me a paper and I had to reject it. What would I tell them?
I thought of primitive people's need for a god to explain the unexplainable. But with our technology, we do amazing things. We give life to the dying, and animate structures of metal and gears and wires. We are powerful! One day we may invent artificial intelligence, or learn to bring the dead back to life - we are well on our way to becoming gods ourselves. And suddenly, in the dream, the world made perfect sense to me. Until I woke up.