It is, at this moment, 9:39 a.m. I awoke from a dream this morning. It was a vivid dream, short.

I lay in bed for a few minutes, pondering the dream. I realized I had to post it, this morning.

I went to my computer to check the time. It was 9:05 a.m.

I dressed and poured myself a tumbler of coffee as I pondered the dream and the meaning of the dream. “This is weird.”

I deliberately reviewed every detail, since I knew I would soon be writing down the dream. I know what happens when you don’t record a dream immediately upon waking. You walk away and forget.

I paced around my two-room flat, thinking about the dream, and the meaning of the dream, and the urgency of posting the dream. No, God had not threatened to take my life if I did not publish it.

But I knew I must. 

I got in my car. The dash clock read 9:15 a.m. I drove down the driveway to the frontage road to the local county library. When I turned off the engine it was 9:29 a.m. I stopped briefly in the parking lot. A man was handling book carts in the back of a large, library  utility truck. “Strapping them together so they don’t rattle around back here.”

Knowing that he might handle such deliveries, I chatted with the bookish man about interlibrary loans as he strapped three carts on the right hand side of the compartment, and bound another two on the left side. He had obviously done this before. He worked systematically until all the wheeled carts were securely tightly in place.

As I walked between the automatic doors I glanced at my cell phone. 9:31.

In the dream I was seated with two people at a long table, the kind they have at church pot lucks after the service. I was sitting across from someone I haven’t seen in decades. Patty.  I told her I was going to speak with someone at the Bible college.

She looked at me skeptically. “Going to cause trouble?”

I responded dryly. “Me? You know I would never do that.”

In the dream I was suddenly escorted into a wood-paneled office decorated with a potted plastic plant, by a man several years shy of middle-age. He gestured toward a chair.   

“Have you filled out your EFCU financial aid packet?” 

“No, I haven’t.”

He looked mildly impatient, and started talking about something.

I said to him, “I have a question.”

He accepted the interruption. “Yes?”

“Do you do any financial counseling with your students before you enroll them?  Do you tell them they will be in debt tor thirty, forty or seventy thousand dollars when they graduate?  Warn them about the chain around their neck for the rest of their lives, in debt up to their eyeballs?”

And I woke up. I considered the dream and the meaning of the dream. They think that if God leads you to Bible college, he will provide a way.

There is a way, a tried and true way used by many. And that path leads straight to a bank.

At this moment, it is 10:20 a.m.

Dream. Verbatim. What I do not understand I leave unedited.