Newsweek published an interesting article about how brain function plays into our belief system. The idea being that because we are wired to look for patterns, we find them. You can read it yourself at the following link to The Ghosts We Think We see: http://www.newsweek.com/id/62337
According to a Gallup Poll less than 7 percent of Americans do not believe in the supernatural. In other words, Americans are more likely to believe in the possibility of ghosts, than in the possibility of God. Even fewer believe in the possibility of Satan, despite daily headlines which sure seems to indicate some powerful negative energy working overtime.
I've been to graveyards at midnight and tramped through my share of haunted houses, but I've never encountered any ghosts in the dark. I have, however, had more than one such encounter in my dreams. I have quite the reputation among family and friends for unnerving dreams. Next time you run into Tim, ask him about the night he went to wake me only to have me scream "Get behind me, Satan!" My former college roommates can attest to the many nights they went to rouse me from some night terror only to be scared out of their wits by my response. My defense is that I can't be held responsible for what I say and do in my sleep, but I still feel bad about the times I kept Linda Hathaway up at night howling like a lost coyote.
Apparently, I don't need a holiday to celebrate ghosts. I commune with them on a regular basis.
Not by intent, mind you. Just sort of happens. I can go to bed perfectly free of any scary thoughts, and without a midnight pizza snack only to wake a few hours later, wrestling with some supernatural being.
It happened most recently just a couple of weeks ago. Tim heard me yelling in my sleep, so he grabbed me by both shoulders and hollered at me to wake up. I did, albeit with my heart thundering in my ears. In this particular dream I was in a classroom, talking, I think, to my former Latin teacher. Or someone who looked a lot like her. We weren't conjugating verbs, however. We were talking plain English, until that moment when she started blabbering some demonic blather, and I started covering her in the name of Jesus.
I do this a lot, in my dreams. You'd think I was raised up Catholic for the way I go around slinging blood in my dreams. I'm forever carrying a lamp that looks like the one used on I Dream of Jeannie. But instead of rubbing the lamp, I'm simply dipping my fingers into it. It's filled with holy water, or most often, holy blood. Lots of times I'm sprinkling folks with the blood. Other times, I'm marking door posts. As in the days of the passover. I really like that visual. The idea that you can mark your doorpost with a bloody x and ghosts won't bother stopping at your house for candy or coffee or anything else.
This post is probably creeping you out, heh?
Sometimes, well, actually, a lot of times, the dreams involve snakes. I talk to snakes. I hold snakes. I run from snakes. I dance with snakes. I never, ever kill snakes. But I don't invite them home for Sunday dinner, either. We just have a healthy respect for each other.
Kind of like me and my dentist. We appreciate one another's giftings, but we don't actually want to linger over lunch together. I bring this up because by the time you read this, I'll be on my way to the dentist for either a really hairy root canal or another one of those wrenching moments in the dentist chair for a tooth that's been making a lot of noise since last spring when the dentist was supposed to have pulled the darn thing but insisted that he could save it. Turns out that saving a tooth can be as difficult as saving some people. Feel free to cover me in your prayers, or with the blood of Jesus, or do a snake dance on my behalf if you are so inclined. Do you think there's a pattern to be found in the dentist chair on Halloween Day?
If you hear screams tomorrow, don't worry. That'll just be me, wishing I had taken better care of my teeth, rather than spending all my youth trick-or-treating.
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