Ever since internship, my stress dreams are always related to worship. Usually they are preaching nightmares, but sometimes just worship-in-general nightmares (things going horribly wrong and/or me being horrendously unprepared). Even in going back to school, my stress dreams this past year have all been preaching or worship related.
Last night I had another one. Curious thing this time, though - I wasn't the pastor in this dream. I was a member of a choir that was singing at someone's ordination. The choir was rather large and composed of members of InVocation, Schola (seminary choir), and the cast of Glee. Everybody else had a robe on, and I was scrambling around the choir room trying to find mine, to no avail. Someone suggested I just dress like a pastor instead, because - conveniently - I DID have my alb with me and I happened to be wearing a cleric (which I pretty much never do unless I'm leading worship). So I put the tab in my cleric and put on my alb but then began freaking out because I only had my white stole in the bag (because it's Easter) and I needed my red stole for an ordination. As I'm running around trying to find a red stole to borrow, the service begins, the choir processes in without me. Whoops. Now I am trying to figure out a way to sneak in without being too much of a distraction and take my place with the choir, though I won't really fit in there wearing my alb, but I also won't really fit in among the pastors because I still haven't found a red stole. I was frantically working at how to fix this situation when I woke up.
And I woke up with a tight knot in my shoulder, the same knot that's been plaguing me for the past three days. The first morning I woke up with it I told myself I must have slept on it funny. But it hasn't gotten any better, and feels terribly similar to the knot that showed up the day after dad took the first load of my stuff back to MN, the knot that stayed with me all summer, not disappearing until I myself was back in MN.
So I was pondering these curious events this morning - the spring semester just ended, and I've got a couple weeks downtime here before my June class begins. What in the world do I have to be stressed about, to the point of having an unusual stress dream and the return of the painful knot?
Then I remembered: exactly a year ago my letter of resignation went in the mail. I spent the whole day having to tell people I dearly love that I was leaving, feeling like I was going to throw up with every new conversation I had to have. My people were incredibly gracious in receiving the news but still, it was one of the most difficult days of my entire life - definitely the most difficult thing I have ever done on purpose.
So, a stress dream in which I feel caught between two worlds and unsure of my role, a painful knot in my shoulder for multiple days - the body remembers, even when the conscious part of ourselves would rather forget. Stress comes out sideways, indeed.
2 comments:
Dreams are sometimes just normal anxieties(normal as in you might not even remember being concerned about them now) that get exaggerated (because all of the other things that constantly concern us from moment to moment are stripped away) and distorted (because when you're sleeping the memory forming parts of your brain are busy and stuff can go flying all over the place in there).
When I was in high school I rarely used my locker, I just carried everything around so I wouldn't have to rush between classes. When I did need to use my locker I would have trouble finding it right away and then I sometimes had difficulty with the combination (but usually got it). Now I sometimes have dreams of wondering the halls looking for my locker, never finding it. If I do find it I can't remember the combination and I keep spinning the dial on the lock. I have never associated the dreams with stress, I think they just come and go because dreams are weird like that and you usually can't spend to much time analyzing them for deeper meaning.
Could the shoulder knots have happened a year ago because you were packing and that irritated something in your shoulder that developed into a shoulder knot? And this time it's shown up could have been a result of playing the XBox for the first time in a while after getting your term paper done? Have you had knots at other times that you didn't associate with stress and you're just forgetting about those?
Not that I'm trying to suggest you're not stressed out. School is finishing for the year with the big paper, InVocation had it's big concerts and the rapture is due any moment now (no need to plan for that big 34th anniversay of Star Wars party for next Wednesday where we watch all 6 in a row). It's just that your deltoid doesn't know what time of year it is, and if stress caused a physical reaction like a chemical imbalance, then they should all be knotting up. Try some anti-inflammatories and cut back on the XBox for a week or two. And you can't trust anything that happens in your dreams to mean anything. Have you ever had sleep paralysis?
If you want to try something fun with your dreams... Download a good free version of Tetris (like this one for Mac. Play it for about 20 mins right before you go to bed every night. Soon you may start playing Tetris in your dreams.
Originally I thought the shoulder knots were packing related, but the only day I *didn't* have them was my last Sunday at UIC. Otherwise, from the day after my dad left with the first load of my stuff to the day after I myself arrived in MN, I had them for 3 months straight, despite hot and cold compresses, neck stretches, massage, and even a visit to the doctor.
I was surprised to wake up with the same knot in my shoulder the morning of Christmas Eve - my first major festival day *not* serving a parish. It only lasted that day, and didn't return until the few days before the anniversary of my resignation. It went away again the day after the anniversary of my resignation.
My deltoid may not know what day of the year it is, but my brain and my spirit certainly do, and in my understanding of the world the body, the mind, and the spirit are mysteriously interconnected in ways that I don't fully understand and can't thoroughly explain yet undeniably experience (including but not limited to meaning-filled dreams - not that every dream I have is meaning-filled but some, like this, are loaded).
So, I have to respectfully agree to disagree with you on this one, Cat's Staff. Scientific reductionism flattens the world a little too much for me. :)
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