Telling the Truth--the aftermath

Thanks to you all for your prayers and support. My sabbath practice is after I've finished my sermon, taking a look at my email, posted (perhaps) my sermon, look at the NYTimes to make sure the Apocalypse hasn't happened, I don't do electronic media. No internet. No TV. No Radio. I was thinking yesterday how calm, relaxed and wonderful I felt. That's why I didn't post yesterday.

So, the reactions: clerk of session "You've certainly laid down the gauntlet." Treasurer; "You stole my sermon for the next session meeting." Older member, not a member of the "core", "I'm going to take a copy of this to --- (her daughter)." One, "good sermon". No one ever (well, there is one guy) talks to me about my sermons. I think I had one comment once that a sermon meant a lot to the person. In two years. It is really strange. I don't know if it's fear or what. Or just a symptom of their death.

I had two dreams Saturday night
Dream 1: Tail end of the dream. I know there was more; I just don't know what it was. I am on a footpath in a sort of valley between two green hills. There is a woman ahead of me. A small boy, maybe two years old, comes up behind me and I pick him up. He is dressed in white and his eyes are rimmed in black and are red. A woman's voice (a narrator?) tells me to look behind me and to the side up one hill. There is a cave-like opening in the hill surmounted by a flat rock. Inside the opening is a gray woman. Her clothes are gray, her hair is gray, the scarf covering her head is gray; her face is gray. Her eyes are gray but like those whirlygigs that when they spin you see different colors, but hers are all gray. The voice tells me she is a rich woman. I say or think that I had seen my friend (I didn't call her name but she's E) who is wealthy in one of those. I thought she was using the toilet. I continue walking and the boy climbs out of my arms and runs ahead to the woman in front of me who is his mother.

Dream 2 a little later the same morning: I am sitting cross legged and the little boy is on my lap. I give him my breast to nurse. The voice asks why I am doing that because I have no milk. (I think he is hungry and there is no food for anyone). I say that I thought it would comfort the child. And milk began to flow.

I think the first setting was a graveyard. But I didn't know in the dream that's where I was. So, what catastrophic am I fleeing through a grave yard? And the rich woman? A warning to me? And who am I to feed? (Besides "my sheep"). The idea of milk at my age is a bit like Sarah. But I really like the image of breast feeding and lots and lots of milk.

Off for my morning walk. I was able to do about a mile and a half yesterday. I'm going to try to a bit more than two miles today, but I'll see how I feel at the 1.5 mi mark.